SEO 2019

Learn Search Engine Optimization

With Smart Internet Marketing Strategies
Expanded & Updated
Adam Clarke
Simple Effectiveness Publishing, Publisher.
Cover Design: Simple Effectiveness Publishing.
Production and Composition: Simple Effectiveness Publishing.
SEO 2019: Learn search engine optimization with smart internet marketing strategies. Copyright ©
Adam Clarke. All rights reserved.
This title, its contents, cover design, likeness and associated marketing materials are the intellectual
property of its copyright holder; the author and publishing company. Copyright infringement,
reproductions or translations of any part of this work without permission of the copyright owner is
unlawful, in accordance with Section 107 and 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act.
Adam Clarke has completed a certificate in the Google Analytics and Google Ads Qualification
programs.
SEO 2019: Learn search engine optimization with smart internet marketing strategies.
Adam Clarke
Kindle ASIN B00NH0XZR0
ISBN: 9781730775758
Table of contents.

Introduction to the updated edition.

1. Introduction to how Google works.

- Old-school methods that no longer work.
- Google updates and how to survive them.
- Authority, Trust & Relevance. The three powerful SEO strategies explained.
- How Google ranks sites now—Google’s top 10 ranking factors revealed.
- How to stay ahead of Google’s updates.

2. Keyword research. The most important step of SEO.

- Why is keyword research so important?
- What is a keyword, exactly?
- How to generate a massive list of keywords.
- How to find keywords that will send traffic to your site.
- How to find keywords for easy rankings.

3. On-page SEO. How to let Google know what your page is about.
- How to structure your site for easy and automatic SEO.
- How to make Google pick up the keywords you want.
- How to get more people clicking on your rankings in Google.
- Site load speed—Google magic dust.
- The usual suspects—sitemaps.xml and robots.txt.
- Duplicate content—canonical tags and other fun.
- Usability—the new SEO explained.
- Mobile support—important SEO explained in simple terms.
- Google ’ s search quality guidelines—and how to use them to your advantage.
- Readability—SEO for the future.
- How to accelerate traffic and rankings with content marketing.
- How to target Featured Snippet rankings in Google’s search results.

4. Link building. How to rank extremely high on Google.

- Why is link building so important?
- The dirty little secret no one wants to tell you about link building.
- How to acquire links and what to avoid in link building.
- Anchor text. What's all the fuss?
- Simple to advanced link building strategies.
- Link outreach—scaling up high quality link building campaigns.
- Additional link building strategies.

5. Social media & SEO.

- Is social media important for SEO?
- Facebook & SEO.
- Twitter & SEO.
- Other social networks.
- Social media analytics.

6. Web analytics in a nutshell. How to measure your success.

- Why use Google Analytics?
- How to use Google Analytics.
- Acquisition.
- Organic Search report.
- Segments.
- Common web analytics terms explained.
- Call tracking—powerful analytics for every business.
- Other web analytics tools.

7. Troubleshooting common SEO problems & how to fix them.

- What to do when your site is not listed in Google at all.
- What to do when your business is not ranking for your own business name.
- What to do when your rankings have dropped off.
- How to seek professional help for free.

8. Local SEO. SEO for local businesses.

- Why use local SEO?
- How to rank high with local SEO.
- Local search ranking factors.
- Getting started with local SEO.
- Building citations.
- Building reviews.
- Supercharging local SEO with photos and videos.
- Local SEO ranking checklist & essential resources.

9. The New Meta: JSON-LD, Microdata, Schema.org & Facebook Open Graph.
- JSON-LD, RDFa, Microdata & Schema.org. Where to start?
- Why use Schema.org & JSON-LD?
- How to use Schema.org.
- Facebook Open Graph.

10. Powerful SEO tools.

- Research tools.
- Optimization tools.
- Link building tools.
- Web analytics tools.

Bonus chapter 1: Google’s algorithm updates.

- HTTPS update & HTTPS upgrade checklist.
- Google’s RankBrain & machine learning announcement.
- HTTP/2—the new technology that can double your load speed.
- Google’s Interstitial update—A.K.A. “Death to mobile popups"
- Accelerated Mobile Pages—A.K.A. Mobile web browsing on steroids.
- Google's FRED and Panda update—diagnosis and recovery.
- Google's Local SEO Hawk & Possum updates.
- Google becoming Apple's default search provider for Siri, iOs and Spotlight on Mac OS.
- Google’s game-changing Mobile First Index.
- Google's Mobile "Speed Update."
- The rise of voice search SEO and Google's new Speakable markup.
- Google’s "Medic Update"—A.K.A "Your Money or Your Life."
- Keeping up to date with Google's updates.
- Google’s 2019 updates—what’s on the horizon?

Bonus chapter 2: The quick and dirty guide to pay-per-click advertising with Google Ads.
- Why bother with pay-per-click advertising?
- Which is the best PPC provider to start with?
- Ensuring success with research and a plan.
- How to choose the right kind of keywords.
- How much to pay for keywords.
- Google Ads settings for getting started.
- Optimization tips for tweaking your campaign for better profit.
- Using Accelerated Mobile Pages in Google Ads campaigns to accelerate your sales.
- Further Google Ads resources.

Bonus: 50 point SEO Checklist PDF Download Instructions.

Final thoughts & tips.

Free SEO checklist PDF available at the end of this
book.

The free 50-point SEO 2019 - SEO Checklist PDF, covering exact steps to
improve your website’s ranking in Google, is available for readers at the end
of this book. Instructions on downloading the SEO checklist PDF are at the
end of the book.
Introduction to the updated edition.

So, you've picked up SEO 2019 and decided to learn search engine
optimization. Congratulations! SEO marketing has changed my life and it can
change yours.
Over 10 years ago, I achieved my first number one ranking in Google for my
family's home business. The phone started ringing with new customers every
day and I was hooked.
Since then, I have used search engine optimization to grow hotel chains, large
international fashion brands, and small family-owned businesses. One thing
never ceases to amaze me—the power of SEO as an Internet marketing tool
for growing any business. I have grown small businesses into giant
companies in just one or two years—simply from working the site up to the
top position in Google.
Unfortunately, learning SEO is difficult, sometimes impossible, for many
business owners, Internet marketers and even tech-heads.
I have a theory on why this is so...
Sifting through the information flooding the Internet about SEO is
overwhelming. In many cases, the advice published is outdated or
misleading. And the constant updates by Google make it hard for SEO
beginners and gurus alike to keep up with what works.
SEO can be simple and used by anyone to rank at the top of Google, grow
their business and make money online. It's simply a matter of having up-to-
date information on how Google works, using effective techniques and taking
action.
This book has been expanded and updated to cover how SEO works now and
likely in the near future. All of the resources and tools have been updated and
made relevant for 2019. It includes broader coverage of the basics, and filled
with more techniques for advanced users. And due to requests by readers, it
has been loaded with more tools and resources to save time and get bigger
results.
If you are a beginner, there is a small amount of technical information
included in this book. If you really want to learn search engine optimization
this can't be avoided. We've made these areas as simple as possible, while
providing additional resources, including an SEO checklist, that will speed up
your journey to SEO mastery.
If you are an advanced SEO optimization professional, this SEO book covers
Google's latest updates, new SEO marketing best practices to refresh your
memory, solutions for common technical problems, and new tools and
resources to sharpen your skillset—all written in an easy-to-read format, so
refreshing your knowledge doesn't feel like a chore.
Whether you're a complete SEO beginner or well-versed Internet marketing
veteran, SEO 2019 covers these areas and makes it as simple as possible to
achieve rankings, traffic and sales.
Enjoy.
Introduction to how Google works.

You can feel like a dog chasing its own tail trying to figure out how Google
works.
There are thousands of bloggers and journalists spreading volumes of
information that simply isn't true. If you followed all the advice about SEO
written on blogs, it's unlikely you would receive top listings in Google, and
there’s a risk you could damage your site performance and make it difficult to
rank at all.
Let me tell you a secret about bloggers…
Articles about the latest SEO updates, techniques or tips are often written by
interns, assistants or even ghostwriters. Their job is to write articles. The
majority of blog posts about SEO are rarely written by experts or
professionals with the day-to-day responsibility of growing site traffic and
achieving top rankings in search engines.
Can you learn from someone who doesn't even know how to do it
themselves?
You can't. This is why you have to take the advice spread by blog posts with
a grain of salt.
Don't get me wrong. I love bloggers. There are bloggers out there who
practice and blog about SEO, and do it well. But it has become increasingly
difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Fear not. This chapter will disperse common misconceptions about SEO,
show you how to avoid falling into Google's bad books and reveal how to
stay up-to-date with how Google ranks sites.
But first, to understand how Google works today, we must understand a little
bit about Google's history.

Old-school methods that no longer work.

In the early days of Google—over 15 years ago— Google started a smarter
search engine and a better experience for navigating the World Wide Web.
Google delivered on this promise by delivering relevant search engine results.
Internet users discovered they could simply type what they were looking for
into Google—and BINGO—users would find what they needed in the top
results, instead of having to dig through hundreds of pages. Google's user
base grew fast.
It didn't take long for smart and entrepreneurially minded webmasters to
catch on to sneaky little hacks for ranking high in Google.
Webmasters discovered by cramming many keywords into the page, they
could get their site ranking high for almost any word or phrase. It quickly
spiraled into a competition of who could jam the most keywords into the
page. The page with the most repeated keywords won, and rose swiftly to the
top of the search results.
Naturally, more and more spammers caught on and Google's promise as the
“most relevant search engine” was challenged. Webmasters and spammers
became more sophisticated and found tricky ways of repeating hundreds of
keywords on the page and completely hiding them from human eyes.
All of a sudden, the unsuspecting Internet user looking for “holidays in
Florida” would find themselves suddenly arriving at a website about Viagra
Viagra Viagra!
How could Google keep its status as the most relevant search engine if people
kept on spamming the results with gazillions of spammy pages, burying the
relevant results at the bottom?
Enter the first Google update. Google released a widespread update in
November 2003 codenamed Florida, effectively stopping spammers in their
tracks. This update leveled the playing field by rendering keyword stuffing
completely useless and restored balance to the force.
And so began the long history of Google updates—making it hard for
spammers to game the system and making ranking in Google a little more
complicated for everyone.

Google updates and how to survive them.

Fast forward 15 years and ranking in Google has become extremely
competitive and considerably more complex.
Simply put, everybody wants to be in Google. Google is fighting to keep its
search engine relevant and must constantly evolve to continue delivering
relevant results to users.
This hasn't been without its challenges. Just like keyword stuffing,
webmasters eventually clued onto another way of gaming the system by
having the most anchor text pointing to the page.
If you are not familiar with this term, anchor text is the text contained in
external links pointing to a page.
This created another loophole exploited by spammers. In many cases, well-
meaning marketers and business owners used this tactic to achieve high
rankings in the search results.
Along came a new Google update in 2012, this time called Penguin. Google's
Penguin update punished sites with suspicious amounts of links with the
same anchor text pointing to a page, by completely delisting sites from the
search results. Many businesses that relied on search engine traffic lost all of
their sales literally overnight, just because Google believed sites with
hundreds of links containing just one phrase didn't acquire those links
naturally. Google believed this was a solid indicator the site owner could be
gaming the system.
If you find these changes alarming, don't. How to recover from these
changes, or to prevent being penalized by new updates, is covered in later
chapters. In the short history of Google's major updates, we can discover two
powerful lessons for achieving top rankings in Google.
1. If you want to stay at the top of Google, never rely on one tactic.
2. Always ensure your search engine strategies rely on SEO best practices.

Authority, trust & relevance. Three powerful SEO

strategies explained.
Google has evolved considerably from its humble origins in 1993.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, once reported that Google considered
over 200 factors to determine which sites rank higher in the results.
Today, Google has well over 200 factors. Google assesses how many links
are pointing to your site, how trustworthy these linking sites are, how many
social mentions your brand has, how relevant your page is, how old your site
is, how fast your site loads… and the list goes on.
Does this mean it's impossible or difficult to get top rankings in Google?
Nope. In fact, you can have the advantage.
Google’s algorithm is complex, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to
understand how it works. In fact, it can be ridiculously simple if you
remember just three principles. With these three principles, you can
determine why one site ranks higher than another, or discover what you have
to do to push your site higher than a competitor. These three principles
summarize what Google are focusing on in their algorithm now, and are the
most powerful strategies SEO professionals are using to their advantage to
gain rankings.
The three key principles are: Trust, Authority and Relevance.
1. Trust.
Trust is at the very core of Google’s major changes and updates the past
several years. Google wants to keep poor-quality, untrustworthy sites out of
the search results, and keep high-quality, legit sites at the top. If your site has
high-quality content and backlinks from reputable sources, your site is more
likely to be considered a trustworthy source, and more likely to rank higher in
the search results.
2. Authority
Previously the most popular SEO strategy, authority is still powerful, but now
best used in tandem with the other two principles. Authority is your site’s
overall strength in your market. Authority is almost a numbers game, for
example: if your site has one thousand social media followers and backlinks,
and your competitors only have fifty social media followers and backlinks,
you’re probably going to rank higher.
3. Relevance.
Google looks at the contextual relevance of a site and rewards relevant sites
with higher rankings. This levels the playing field a bit, and might explain
why a niche site or local business can often rank higher than a Wikipedia
article. You can use this to your advantage by bulking out the content of your
site with relevant content, and use the on-page SEO techniques described in
later chapters to give Google a nudge to see that your site is relevant to your
market. You can rank higher with less links by focusing on building links
from relevant sites. Increasing relevance like this is a powerful strategy and
can lead to high rankings in competitive areas.

How Google ranks sites now—Google’s top 10

ranking factors revealed.
You may have wondered if you can find out the exact factors Google uses in
their algorithm.
Fortunately, there are a handful of industry leaders who have figured it out,
and regularly publish their findings on the Internet. With these publications,
you can get a working knowledge of what factors Google uses to rank sites.
These surveys are typically updated every second year, but these factors
don’t change often, so you can use them to your advantage by knowing
which areas to focus on.
Here ’ s a short list of some of the strongest factors found in sites ranking in
the top 10 search results, in the most recent study by Search Metrics:
- Overall content relevance.
- Click-through-rate.
- Time-on-site.
- Bounce rate (low bounce rates are better).
- HTTPS—security certificate installed on site.
- Font size in main content area (presumably people find larger fonts more
readable and leads to higher engagement).
- Number of images.
- Number of internal links.
- Total social media activity.
- Number of backlinks.
If your competitors have more of the above features than yours, then it’s
likely they will rank higher than you. If you have more of the above features
than competitors, then it is likely you will rank higher.
Combine this knowledge with an understanding of the Google updates
covered in later chapters, and you will know what it takes to achieve top
rankings.
The above factors are from the Search Metrics Google Ranking Factors study
released in 2016. Regrettably, after releasing the study, Search Metrics said
they would stop publishing their search rankings whitepapers in the future,
but you can be sure content relevance, user engagement, social activity, links,
site security (HTTPS), and most likely mobile support, are among current
ranking factors. If you want a deeper look into the study, you can browse the
full report by visiting the link below. I cover more recent updates to the
algorithm in the Google Algorithm updates chapter later in this book.
Search Metrics: Google Ranking Factors US
https://www.searchmetrics.com/knowledge-base/ranking-factors/
Another well-known authority on the SEO industry, called Moz (previously
SEOmoz), releases a rankings study every several years. Moz also publish
this information for free, and available at the following page.
Moz Ranking Factors Survey
https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

How to stay ahead of Google’s updates.

Every now and then, Google releases a significant update to their algorithm,
which can have a massive impact on businesses from any industry. To hone
your SEO chops and make sure your site doesn't fall into Google's bad books,
it's important to stay informed of Google’s updates as they are released.
Fortunately, almost every time a major update is released, those updates are
reported on by the entire SEO community and sometimes publicly discussed
and confirmed by Google staff.
A long-extended history of Google’s updates would fill this entire book, but
with the resources below, you can stay abreast of new Google updates as they
are rolled out. This is essential knowledge for anyone practicing SEO, at a
beginner or an advanced level.
You can even keep your ear to the ground with these sources and often be
forewarned of future updates.
Google Updates by Search Engine Round Table
https://www.seroundtable.com/category/google-updates
Search Engine Round Table is one of the industry’s leading blogs on SEO. At
the page above, you can browse all of the latest articles on Google updates by
a leading authority on the topic.
Search Engine Journal
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/category/search-engine-optimization/
Search Engine Journal is another authoritative, relevant and frequently
updated publication about everything SEO. An indispensable resource for
keeping abreast of industry events as they happen.
Moz Blog
https://moz.com/blog
The Moz blog is mentioned several times in this book and for good reason—
it’s among the leading authority blogs covering all things SEO, and if there’s
an impending update on the radar, you will catch wind of it here.
Keyword research. The most
important step of SEO.

Why is keyword research so important?

Keyword research is the most important step of every SEO project for two
reasons:
1. If you rank your site highly for the wrong keywords, you can end up
spending lots of time and effort, only to discover the keywords you have
targeted doesn't receive any traffic.
2. If you haven't investigated the competitiveness of your keywords, you can
end up investing lots of time and effort into a particular keyword, only to find
it is far too competitive to rank, even on the first page.
These two pitfalls are often the ultimate decider on how successful any SEO
project is.
This chapter will cover how to avoid these pitfalls and how to find the best
keywords. First, we must define what a keyword is.

What exactly is a keyword?

If you are an SEO newbie, you may be wondering—what is a keyword?
A keyword is any phrase you would like your site to rank for in Google's
search results. A keyword can be a single word, or a keyword can also be a
combination of words. If you are trying to target a single word, lookout! You
will have your work cut out for you. Single word keywords are extremely
competitive, and difficult to rank highly for in the search results.
Here’s some different kinds of keywords:
Head-term keywords: keywords with one to two words, i.e. classic movies.
Long-tail keywords: keywords with three or more phrases, i.e. classic Akira
Kurosawa movies.
Navigational keywords: keywords used to locate a particular brand or
website. Examples would be Facebook, YouTube or Gmail.
Informational keywords: keywords used to discover on a particular topic.
This includes keywords beginning with “how to…” or “what are the best...”
Transactional keywords: keywords entered into Google by customers
wanting to complete a commercial action, i.e. buy jackets online.
In most cases, targeting head-term or navigational keywords for other brands
is competitive and not worth the time or effort. Despite their high traffic
numbers, they will generally not lead to any sales. On the other hand, long-
tail, informational and transactional keywords are good keywords for most
SEO projects. They will lead to more customers.

How to generate a massive list of keywords.

There are many ways to skin a cat. The same is true for finding the right
keywords.
Before you can find keywords with loads of traffic in Google, you must first
develop a list of potential keywords relevant to your business.
Relevance is vital.
If you spend your time trying to cast too wide a net, you can end up targeting
keywords irrelevant to your audience.
For example, if you are an online football jacket retailer in the United States,
examples of relevant keywords might be:
Buy football jackets
Buy football jackets online
Online football jackets store USA
Irrelevant keywords might be:
Football jacket photos
How to make your own football jacket
Football jacket manufacturers
How to design a football jacket
You can see how the first pool of keywords are more relevant to the target
audience of football jacket retailers, and the second pool of keywords are
related but unlikely to lead to customers.
Keeping relevance in mind, you must develop a list of potential keyword
combinations to use as a resource, so you can then go and uncover the best
keywords with a decent amount of traffic each month in Google.
Following are some powerful strategies you can use to help with generating
this list.
1. Steal keywords from competitors.
If you're feeling sneaky, you can let your competitors do the heavy lifting for
you and snatch up keywords from their sites.
There are many tools out there created for this sole purpose. A simple and
free tool is the Keyword Density Checker. If you enter a page into this tool
within seconds it will scrape a list of the keywords your competitor has
optimized into their page. You can then use this to bulk out your keyword
list.
Keyword Density Checker – SEO Review Tools
https://www.seoreviewtools.com/keyword-density-checker/
While the Keyword Density Checker is a great, simple tool for revealing the
keywords your competitors have optimized into the page, another powerful
tool is Ahrefs Organic Keywords report. This tool estimates the keywords
that are sending the largest amount of traffic to your competitors’ websites.
The estimates are reasonably accurate and can be a valuable resource for
bulking out your keyword lists.
While Ahrefs reports are powerful, they do come at a cost. You can preview
the first 20-keywords for free, but if you want more data, they currently offer
a 7-day trial for $7, and after an initial trial, monthly billing starts at $99 per
month.
Ahrefs – Competitor Research Tools & Backlink Checker
https://ahrefs.com
2. Brainstorm your own master list.
Assuming competitors have been thorough with their research isn't always
the best strategy. By brainstorming combinations of keywords, you can
generate a giant list of potential keywords.
To do this, sketch out a grid of words your target customer might use. Split
the words into different prefixes and suffixes. Next up, combine them into
one giant list using the free Mergewords tool. With this strategy, you can
quickly and easily build up a massive list of relevant keywords.
Mergewords
http://mergewords.com/
Prefix
- buy
- where do I buy
Middle word
- NFL jerseys
- NFL uniforms
- NFL jackets
Suffixes
- online
Combined keywords
- NFL jerseys
- NFL jerseys online
- NFL uniforms
- NFL uniforms online
- NFL jackets
- NFL jackets online
- buy NFL jerseys
- buy NFL jerseys online
- buy NFL uniforms
- buy NFL uniforms online
- buy NFL jackets
- buy NFL jackets online
- where do I buy NFL jerseys
- where do I buy NFL jerseys online
- where do I buy NFL uniforms
- where do I buy NFL uniforms online
- where do I buy NFL jackets
- where do I buy NFL jackets online
- NFL jerseys
- NFL jerseys online
- NFL uniforms
- NFL uniforms online
- NFL jackets
- NFL jackets online

How to find keywords that will send traffic to your

site.
Now you have a list of keywords, you need to understand how much traffic
these keywords receive in Google. Without search traffic data, you could end
up targeting keywords with zero searches. Armed with the right knowledge,
you can target keywords with hundreds or even thousands of potential
visitors every month.
Unfortunately, in recent years Google has restricted access to the data behind
Google's search box, leaving us with two options for finding keyword traffic
data.
Firstly, if you have a Google Ads campaign running with Google and are
already spending a modest amount, then you’re in the clear, you can access
this info for free in their Keyword Planner tool. If this isn’t you, the other
option is to use a paid keyword research tool for a small monthly fee, such as
keywordtool.io. As a result of Google making search data unavailable to free
users, free keyword tools disappeared from the market, making paid research
tools the only viable option for finding traffic data for keywords these days.
If you're on a tight budget, then you can sign up for a paid plan with one of
the many paid keyword research tools on the market then ask for a refund
after doing your research. It's not nice, but it's an option—either way, you
need the traffic data behind your keywords otherwise you are running blind.
1. Estimating keyword traffic data with Google’s Keyword Planner.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
As mentioned, to access all the juicy traffic data provided by the Google Ads
Keyword Planner tool, you need an active Google Ads campaign running,
and must be spending at least a modest amount of money regularly. If this is
you, sign in, click on Tools in the top-menu, click on “Keyword Planner”
then click on “Get search volume data and trends”, copy and paste your
keywords into the box. Select your country, and then click the blue “Get
search volume” button. When finished, you will have the exact amount of
times each keyword was searched for in Google.
Mmm. Fresh data. This is just the kind of data we need.
Now we know which keywords receive more searches than others, and more
importantly, we know which keywords receive no searches at all.

2. Estimating keyword traffic data with a paid tool like KWFinder.

KWFinder
https://kwfinder.com/
If you want a research tool with a stronger SEO focus, then you can use a
paid tool such as KWFinder. I like KWFinder for its ease of use, relevant
keyword suggestions, and competitive data, but you're not limited to this tool
—there’s many alternatives floating around you can find with a couple of
Google searches.
Using KWFinder as an example, after creating an account, simply log in,
select the local area you are targeting (i.e. Los Angeles, California, if that is
your customer focus), enter your keyword ideas and download the juicy data.
Now you can ensure you spend time focusing on keywords with traffic
potential, as opposed to chasing after keywords with no traffic and little
opportunity for growing your business.

How to find keywords for easy rankings.

Now you need to find out how competitive your desired keywords are.
Armed with an understanding of the competitiveness of your keywords, you
can discover keywords you can realistically rank for in Google.
Let’s say you are a second-hand bookseller and you want to target “book
store online”. It's unlikely you are going to beat Amazon and Barnes and
Noble.
But, maybe there’s a gem hiding in your keyword list few people are
targeting—maybe something like “antique book stores online”.
You have the advantage if your competitors haven't thought of targeting your
keyword. You simply have to do better SEO than they are doing and you
have a really good chance at beating their rankings. Part of this includes
having a large keyword list for your research.
Next, you need to wash this list and separate the ridiculously competitive
keywords from the easy keywords no one are aggressively targeting.
There are many schools of thought on how to find the competitiveness of
your keywords. The most popular practices are listed below, with my
thoughts on each.
1. Manually going through the list, looking at the rankings, and checking
if low-quality pages are appearing in the top results.
This is good for a quick glance to see how competitive a market is. However,
unreliable and you need real data to rely on.
2. Look at how many search engine results are coming up in Google for
your keyword.
The amount of results is listed just below the search box after you type in
your keyword. This tactic is common in outdated courses teaching SEO, but
completely unreliable.
The reason? There may be a very low number of competing pages for a
particular keyword, but the sites ranked at the top of the results could be
unbeatable.
3. Using the competition score from the Google Ads Keyword Planner
tool.
Don't be tempted. This is a common beginners mistake, and sometimes
recommended as an easy way to judge SEO competitiveness for keywords on
some blogs, and it just simply doesn't work!
The competition score included in the Google Ads Keyword Research tool is
intended for Google Ads advertising campaigns only. It is an indication of
how many advertisers are competing for the particular keyword through paid
advertising. Completely irrelevant for SEO.
4. Using a competitive analysis tool, such as KWFinder ’ s SEO Difficulty
report.
To get a realistic idea of your chances for ranking high for a particular
keyword, you need to understand the strength of the pages currently ranking
in the top-10 search results for that keyword.
A great tool for this is KWFinder ’ s SEO Difficulty report. With
KWFinder ’ s SEO Difficulty report, simply enter your keyword into their
tool, click “check difficulty”, and it will show vital stats for pages appearing
in the top 10.
Of these stats, the most important are Domain Authority, Page Authority,
Links, and Facebook Shares … If you don ’ t have high Domain Authority or
Page Authority—don ’ t freak out. If your site is more relevant to the topic,
you can often nudge your way up the results by focusing on building up
backlinks to your page and improving your social media activity, especially if
those stronger sites have little amounts of links and social activity on their
pages, and are non-specific, generic directory or aggregator type sites.
Next up, if you enter your own website into Ahref ’ s Site Explorer tool, you
can see the same stats for your site, and set targets for beating the
competition.
Ahrefs – Competitor Research Tools & SEO Backlink Checker
https://ahrefs.com/
Armed with this knowledge, you can hunt around to find keywords with
reasonable levels of traffic, weak competition, and set targets for how many
links you need for a top listing. You can even find keywords competitors are
using, estimates of how much traffic they are getting from those keywords,
even where they are getting their links from!
There ’ s many keyword tools and site analysis tools which can be found with
a couple of Google searches. Every SEO professional ultimately has a
different favorite tool they prefer, the following tools are well known in the
field and I often use myself.
KWFinder – Keyword research and analysis tool
https://kwfinder.com/
Ahrefs – Competitor Research Tools & SEO Backlink Checker
https://ahrefs.com/
Moz - Keyword Explorer
https://moz.com/explorer/keyword/
Moz – Link Explorer
https://moz.com/link-explorer
When finished reading this book, you can work through the keyword research
points in the free SEO checklist included at the end of the book, with the
above process outlined in a step-by-step approach.
On-page SEO. How to let Google
know what your page is about.

On-page SEO is the process of ensuring that your site is readable to search
engines. Learning correct on-page SEO is not only important in ensuring
Google picks up the keywords you want, but it is an opportunity to achieve
easy wins and improve your website’s overall performance.
On-page SEO includes the following considerations:
1. Making sure site content is visible to search engines.
2. Making sure your site is not blocking search engines.
3. Making sure search engines pick up the keywords you want.
Most on-page SEO you can do yourself, if you have a basic level of
experience dealing with sites.
If you are not technically inclined, please note there are technical sections of
this chapter. You should still read these so you understand what has to be
done to achieve rankings in Google, you can easily hire a web designer or
web developer to implement the SEO techniques in this chapter, after you
know what it takes to achieve top rankings.

How to structure your site for easy and automatic

SEO.
These best practices will ensure your site is structured for better recognition
by Google and other search engines.
1. Search engine friendly URLs.
Have you ever visited a web page and the URL looked like something like
this:
http://www.examplesite.com/~articlepage21/post-entry321.asp?q=3
What a mess!
These kinds of URLs are a quick way to confuse search engines and site
visitors. Clean URLs are more logical, user friendly and search engine
friendly.
Here is an example of a clean URL:
http://www.examplesite.com/football-jerseys
Much better.
Take a quick look at Google's search engine results. You will see a very large
portion of sites in the top 10 have clean and readable URLs like the above
example. And by a very large portion… I mean the vast majority.
Most site content management systems have search engine friendly URLs
built into the site. It is often a matter of simply enabling the option in your
site settings. If your site doesn't have search engine friendly URLs, it's time
for a friendly chat with your web developer to fix this up.
2. Internal navigation
There is no limit on how to structure the navigation of your site. This can be a
blessing or a curse.
Some people force visitors to watch an animation or intro before they can
even access the site. In the process, some sites make it harder for visitors and
more confusing for search engines to pick up the content on the site.
Other sites keep it simple by having a menu running along the top of the site
or running down the left-hand side of the browser window. This has pretty
much become an industry standard for most sites.
By following this standard, you make it significantly easier for visitors and
search engines to understand your site. If you intend to break this convention,
you must understand it is likely you will make it harder for search engines to
pick up all of the pages on your site.
As a general rule, making it easier for users makes it easier for Google.
Above all else, your web site navigation must be made of real text links—not
images.
If your main site navigation is currently made up of images, slap your web
designer and change them to text now! If you do not have the main
navigation featured in text, your internal pages will almost be invisible to
Google and other search engines.
For an additional SEO boost, include links to pages you want visible to
search engines and visitors on the home page.
By placing links specifically on the home page, Google's search engine spider
can come along to your site and quickly understand which pages on your site
are important and worth including in the search results.

How to make Google pick up the keywords you

want.
There are many misconceptions being circulated about what to do, and what
not to do, when it comes to optimizing keywords into your page.
Some bloggers are going so far as telling their readers to not put keywords in
the content of targeted pages at all. These bloggers—I'm not naming names—
do have the best intentions and have really taken worry about Google's spam
detection to the next level. But it is madness.
Not having keywords on your page makes it difficult for Google to match
your page with the keyword you want to rank for. If Google completely
devalued having keywords on the page, Google would be a crappy search
engine.
Think about it. If you search for “Ford Mustang 65 Auto Parts” and arrive on
pages without those words on the page at all, it's highly unlikely you have
found what you’re looking for.
Google needs to see the keywords on your page, and these keywords must be
visible to your users. The easy approach is to either create content around
your keyword, or naturally weave your keyword into the page. I'm not saying
your page should look like the following example.
“Welcome to the NFL jersey store. Here we have NFL jerseys galore, with a
wide range of NFL jerseys including women’s NFL jerseys, men's NFL
jerseys and children's NFL jerseys and much, much more.”
This approach may have worked 10 years ago, but not now. The keyword
should appear naturally in your page. Any attempts to go bonkers with your
keywords will look horrible and may set off spam filters in search engines.
Use your keyword naturally throughout the content. Repeating your keyword
once or twice is more than enough.
It's really that simple.
Next up, you need to ensure you have a handful of LSI keywords on your
page. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Don’t be discouraged by the
technical term, LSI keywords is an SEO term for related phrases. Google
believes a page is more naturally written, and has a higher tendency to be
good quality and relevant, if it also includes relevant and related keywords to
your main phrase.
To successfully optimize a page, you need to have your main keywords and
related keywords in the page. Find two or three related keywords to your
main keyword, and repeat these in the page once or two times each.
Ubersuggest is a great tool for finding keywords Google considers related to
your main keywords—it does this by pulling suggestions from Google’s
auto-suggest box. Use Ubersuggest and your keyword research to determine a
list of the most related keywords.
Ubersuggest – Free
https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
Areas you can weave keywords into the page include:
- Meta description and meta title tags
- Navigation anchor text
- Navigation anchor title tags
- Headings (h1, h2, h3, and h4 tags)
- Content text
- Bolded and italicized text
- Internal links in content
- Image filename, image alt tag and image title tag
- Video filename, video title

How to get more people clicking on your rankings

in Google.
Meta tags have been widely misunderstood as mysterious pieces of code SEO
professionals mess around with, and the secret to attaining top rankings. This
couldn't be further from the truth.
The function of meta tags is really quite simple. Meta tags are bits of code on
your site controlling how your site appears in Google.
If you don't fill out your meta tags, Google will automatically use text from
your site to create your search listing. This is exactly what you don't want
Google to do, otherwise it can end up looking like gibberish! Fill out these
tags correctly, and you can increase the number of people clicking to your
site from the search engine results.
Below is an example of the meta tag code.
<title>Paul’s NFL Jerseys</title>
<meta description=”Buy NFL jerseys online. Wide range of colors and
sizes.”/>
<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir"/>
Below is an example of how a page with the above meta tag should appear as
a search engine result in Google:
Paul's NFL Jerseys
Buy Paul's NFL jerseys online. Wide range of colors and sizes. Free delivery
and free returns. We accept international orders!
http://www.yoursite.com/
Pretty simple, huh?
The title tag has a character limit of roughly 70 characters in Google. Use any
more than 70 characters and it is likely Google will truncate your title tag in
the search engine results.
The meta description tag has a character limit of roughly 155 characters. Just
like the title tag, Google will shorten your listing if it has any more than 155
characters in the tag.
The last meta robots tag indicates to Google you want to control how your
listing appears in the search results. It’s good to include this, while unlikely,
it ’ s possible Google can ignore your tags and instead use those listed on
other directories such as the Open Directory Project and the Yahoo Directory.
To change these tags on your site you have three options:
1. Use the software your site is built on. Most content management systems
have the option to change these tags. If it doesn't, you may need to install an
SEO plugin to change these tags.
2. Speak with your web designer or web developer to manually change your
Meta tags for you.
3. If you are a tech-savvy person and are familiar with HTML, you can
change these tags in the code yourself.

Site load speed—Google magic dust.

How fast (or slow) your site loads is a strong factor Google considers when
deciding how it should rank your pages in the search results.
Google ’ s former head of web spam, Matt Cutts, publicly admitted fast load
speed is a positive ranking factor.
If your site is as slow as a dead snail, then it is likely your site is not living up
to its potential in the search engines. If your site load time is average,
improving the load speed is an opportunity for an easy SEO boost.
Not only is load speed a contributing factor to achieving top rankings in
Google, extensive industry reports have shown for each second shaved off a
site, there is an average increase of 7% to the site conversion rate. In other
words, the faster your site loads, the more chance you have of people
completing a sale or filling out an enquiry form. Load speed is not an aspect
of your site to be overlooked.
Every site is built differently, with an endless variation of server
configurations, which means improving your load speed isn't as simple as
following a checklist. However, the following techniques are common
improvements that will work on most sites.
Common load speed improvements.
- Host your site in the city where your customers reside and load speeds will
increase.
- Alternatively, use a CDN (content delivery network) to host your site on
servers all over the world. Visitors will get super-fast load speeds regardless
of location. Popular CDN services include Amazon CloudFront, MaxCDN
and Cloudfare.
- Enable load speed technologies like caching, compression, minification and
HTTP/2. Most platforms have plugins for this, e.g. W3 Total Cache is a
popular plugin offering most of these features on WordPress.
- Find large files on your site and shrink them. Use software like Adobe
Photoshop and you can compress image file sizes from 3MB down to 250KB
without visual loss in quality, by using Photoshop's "save for web" feature.
An easy-win for image-heavy sites.
The above are just a handful of the infinite possibilities for improving a site’s
load speed. Fortunately, there's several tools making easy to identify speed
improvements, and speed bottlenecks, irrespective of the technology your site
is built on.
Load speed analysis tools.
1. Google Page Speed Insights
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Google's great free tool, Page Speed Insights, will give you a page load score
out of 100. You can see how well your load speed compares to other sites.
You can also see how well your site loads on mobile and desktop. Scores
closer to 100 are near perfect.
After running a test on your site, the tool will give you a list of high priority,
medium priority and low priority areas for improvement. You can forward
these on to your developer to speed up your site, or if you are a bit of a tech-
head, you can have a crack at fixing these up yourself.
2. Test My Site - Think With Google
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Around late June, 2017 Google updated their mobile load speed testing tool,
Test My Site, to include benchmarking reports against industry competitors.
This tool is both easy-to-use and indispensable for finding easy-win load
speed improvements for mobile users—and handy for seeing how your
website performs against competitors.
You might be shocked the first time you use this tool—many site owners
discover they are losing up to 30%-50% of traffic, due to poor loading time
on 3G mobile devices, not a great outlook .
Fortunately, the handy tool provides free reports and actionable
recommendations on how to supercharge your load speed with a strong focus
on improvements for mobile users. If you follow the recommendations and
get your site performing better than competitors, you can make out like a
bandit in the search results, with load speed being a top ranking factor driving
the search results.
3. Pingdom Tools – Website Speed Test
https://tools.pingdom.com/
Pingdom Tools Website Speed Test is the cream of the crop when it comes to
load speed tools, providing detailed breakdowns of files and resources
slowing your site down, listing file-sizes of individual files, server load times,
and much more. It goes into much greater depth than the other tools, though
probably best suited for a web developer or someone with a basic level of
experience building websites.
After the test is completed, if you scroll down you will see a list of files each
visitor has to download each time they visit your site. Large images are easy
targets for load speed improvements. If you have any images over 200kb,
these can usually be compressed in Photoshop and shrunk down to a fraction
of the size without any quality loss. Take a note of any large files, send them
to your web developer or web designer, and ask them to compress the files to
a smaller file size.
4. Lighthouse – Tools For Web Developers – Google
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/
For advanced developers working on complicated projects or sites—i.e.
programmers who know what a Node module is—Google released a
powerful Chrome extension called Lighthouse. Lighthouse provides reports
on website performance, accessibility, adherence to programming best
practices, SEO and more—with actionable steps on improving each of these
areas. While owners of basic websites probably won't get additional insights
from this tool, on top of recommendations provided by the earlier tools,
programming ninjas looking for a well-rounded tool to enhance his or her
performance chops will find Google's Lighthouse is the Swiss Army knife of
site performance analysis.

The usual suspects—sitemaps.xml and robots.txt.

Sitemaps.xml
Search engines automatically look for a special file on each site called the
sitemaps.xml file. Having this file on your site is a must for making it easy
for search engines to discover pages on your site. Sitemaps are essentially a
giant map of all of the pages on your site. Fortunately, creating this file and
getting it on to your site is a straightforward process.
Most CMS systems have a sitemap file automatically generated. This
includes systems like Wordpress, Magento, Shopify. If this is not the case on
your site, you may need to install a plugin or use the free XML Sitemaps
Generator tool. The XML Sitemaps Generator will automatically create a
sitemaps.xml file for you.
XML Sitemaps Generator
https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Next ask your web developer or web designer to upload it into the main
directory of your site, or do it yourself if you have FTP access. Once
uploaded, the file should be publicly accessible with an address like the
below example:
http://www.yoursite.com/sitemaps.xml
Once you have done this, you should submit your sitemap to the Google
Search Console account for your site.
If you do not have a Google Search Console account, the below article by
Google gives simple instructions for web developers or web designers to set
this up.
Add a website property – Search Console Help
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592
Login to your account and click on your site. Under “site configuration” click
“sitemaps”, and submit your sitemap.
Robots.txt
Another must-have for every site is a robots.txt file. This should sit in the
same place as your sitemaps.xml file. The address to this file should look the
same as the example below:
http://www.yoursite.com/robots.txt
The robots.txt file is a simple file that exists so you can tell the areas of your
site you don’t want Google to list in the search engine results.
There is no real boost from having a robots.txt file on your site. It is essential
you check to ensure you don’t have a robots.txt file blocking areas of your
site you want search engines to find.
The robots.txt file is just a plain text document, its contents should look
something like below:
# robots.txt good example
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin
User-agent: *
Disallow: /logs
If you want your site to tell search engines to not crawl your site, it should
look like the next example. If you do not want your entire site blocked, you
must make sure it does not look like the example below. It is always a good
idea to double check it is not set up this way, just to be safe.
# robots.txt - blocking the entire site
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The forward slash in this example tells search engines their software should
not visit the home directory.
To create your robots.txt file, simply create a plain text document with
Notepad if you are on Windows, or Textedit if you are on Mac OS. Make
sure the file is saved as a plain text document, and use the “robots.txt good
example” as an indication on how it should look. Take care to list any
directories you do not want search engines to visit, such as internal folders
for staff, admin areas, CMS back-end areas, and so on.
If there aren’t any areas you would like to block, you can skip your robots.txt
file altogether, but just double check you don’t have one blocking important
areas of the site like the above example.

Duplicate content—canonical tags and other fun.

In later chapters I will describe how Google Panda penalizes sites with
duplicate content. Unfortunately, many site content management systems will
sometimes automatically create multiple versions of one page.
For example, let’s say your site has a product page on socket wrenches, but
because of the system your site is built on, the exact same page can be
accessed from multiple URLs from different areas of your site:
http://www.yoursite.com/products.aspx?=23213
http://www.yoursite.com/socket-wrenches
http://www.yoursite.com/tool-kits/socket-wrenches
In the search engine’s eyes this is confusing as hell and multiple versions of
the page are considered duplicate content.
To account for this, you should always ensure a special tag is placed on every
page in your site, called the canonical tag.
The canonical tag indicates the original version of a web page to search
engines. By telling Google the page you consider to be the “true” version of
the page into the tag, you can indicate which page you want listed in the
search results.
Choose the URL that is the most straightforward for users, this should usually
be the URL that reads like plain English.
Using the earlier socket wrenches example, by using the tag below, Google
would be more likely to display the best version of the page in the search
engine results.
<link rel="canonical
" href="http://www.yoursite.com/socket-wrenches
"/>
As a general rule, include this tag on every page on your site, shortly before
the </head> tag in the code.

Usability—the new SEO explained.

Mobiles and tablets have overtaken desktops in the vicious battle for Internet
market share, making up 56% of all traffic in 2017. To keep a good
experience for all users, Google are increasingly giving advantages to sites
providing a good experience for users on all devices. Usability has increased
importance in the SEO industry as a result, as many SEO pundits found you
can get an advantage simply by making your site easy to use.
For example, let’s say a mobile user is searching for late night pizza delivery
in Los Angeles. One local business has a site with a large amount of
backlinks but no special support for mobile users, it’s difficult for the user to
navigate because it doesn’t automatically fit to the screen, and the menu text
is small and hard to use on a touch screen.
Another competing local business has low amounts of backlinks, but good
support for mobile users. Its design fits perfectly to the screen and has special
navigation designed for mobile users, making it easy to use.
In many cases, the second site will now rank higher than the first, for mobile
users. This is just one example of how usability can have a significant impact
on your rankings.
While a term like usability can understandably seem a little vague, let’s look
at practical steps to improve your usability and the SEO strength of your site.
1. Make your site accessible for all devices.
Make your site accessible and easy for all users: desktop, mobile and tablet.
The simple way to do this is to make sure your site is responsive, which
means it automatically resizes across all devices and has mobile-friendly
navigation for mobile users. Mobile support is covered in more detail, in the
Mobile SEO Update section in the Google ’ s Algorithm Updates chapter
later in this book, but you can enter your site into the tool below quickly to
see if Google registers your site as mobile friendly.
Mobile friendly Test - Google
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
2. Increase your content quality.
Gone are the days of hiring a bunch of writers in India to bulk out the content
on your site. It needs to be proofread and edited, and the more “sticky” you
make your content, the better results you will get. If you provide compelling
content, users will spend more time on your site and are less likely to bounce
back to the search results. Users will also be much more likely to share your
content. Google will see this and give your rankings a boost.
3. Use clean code in your site.
There’s a surprisingly high amount of sites with dodgy code, difficult for
both search engines and Internet browsers to read. If there are HTML code
errors in your site, which means, if it hasn’t been coded according to industry
best practices, it’s possible your design will break when your site is viewed
on different browsers, or even worse, confuse search engines when they come
along and look at your site. Run your site through the below tool and ask
your web developer to fix any errors.
Web standards validator
https://validator.w3.org/
4. Take it easy on the popups and advertisements.
Sites with spammy and aggressive ads are often ranked poorly in the search
results. The SEO gurus have reached no consensus on the amount of ads
leading to a penalty from Google, so use your common sense. Ensure
advertisements don’t overshadow your content and occupy the majority of
screen real estate.
5. Improve the overall “operability” of your site.
Does your site have slow web hosting, or a bunch of broken links and
images? Simple technical oversights like these contribute to a poor user
experience.
Make sure your site is with a reliable web hosting company and doesn’t go
down in peak traffic. Even better, make sure your site is hosted on a server in
your local city, and this will make it faster for local users.
Next up, chase up any 404-errors with your web developer. 404 errors are
errors indicating users are clicking on links in your site and being sent to an
empty page. It contributes to a poor user experience in Google’s eyes.
Fortunately, these errors are easy fixed.
You can find 404 errors on your site by logging into your Google Search
Console account, clicking on your site, then clicking on “Crawl” and “Crawl
Errors”. Here you will find a list of 404 errors. If you click on the error and
then click “Linked From” you can find the pages with the broken links. Fix
these yourself, or discuss with your web developer.
Google Search Console
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
If you want external tools to speed up improving your site’s usability, I have
found these two resources helpful:
BrowserStack - Free to try, plans start at $29 per month.
https://www.browserstack.com
BrowserStack allows you to test your site on over +700 different browsers at
once. You can preview how your site works on tablets, mobile devices, and
all the different browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer,
and so on. It’s helpful for making sure it displays correctly across many
different devices.
Try My UI - Free to try, additional test results start at $35.
https://www.trymyui.com/
Try My UI provides videos, audio narration, surveys of users going through
your site, and reports on any difficulties they uncover. Usability tests are
good for larger projects requiring objective feedback from normal users. The
first test result is free, making Try My UI a good usability test provider to
start with.

Mobile support—important SEO explained in

simple terms.
On April, 2015, Google released a game changing update for the SEO
industry. Sites with solid mobile support started ranking higher in the Google
mobile search results. Sites with no mobile support generally started ranking
lower in mobile search results.
Whether we like it or not, mobile users are here to stay and Google are
driving the mobile revolution. With the largest mobile app store in the world,
the largest mobile operating system in the world, and the largest amount of
mobile search users, it’s safe to say mobile users are a priority for Google.
If you are not supporting mobile users, it’s important to implement mobile
support, not just for better search engine results, but for better sales and
conversions—quite simply, the majority of your traffic is coming from
mobile users.
How to best support mobile users.
If you want to increase support for mobile devices and be more search engine
friendly, you have three options:
1. Create a responsive site.
Responsive sites are the cream of the crop when it comes to sites that support
both desktop and mobile devices. With responsive sites, both mobile and
desktop users see the same pages and same content, and everything is
automatically sized to fit the screen. It’s also becoming more common for
WordPress templates and new sites to feature a responsive layout.
2. Dynamically serve different content to mobile and desktop users.
You can ask your web developer to detect which devices are accessing your
site and automatically deliver a different version of your site catered to the
device. This is a complicated setup, better suited for large sites with
thousands of pages, with complicated infrastructure, when a responsive
approach is not possible.
3. Host your mobile content on a separate subdomain, e.g.
m.yoursite.com
While Google stated they support this implementation, I recommend against
it. You need a lot of redirects in place, and must jump through giant hoops to
ensure search engines recognize your special mobile subdomain as a copy of
your main site. Responsive sites are popular for good reason: it’s easier and
cheaper to maintain one site rather than both maintaining a desktop copy of
your site and maintaining a separate mobile copy of your site, on a mobile
subdomain.
Improving performance in the mobile search results.
Google stated mobile support is straightforward, either your site supports
mobile devices or it doesn’t... Well it’s not straightforward. You can get an
edge over competitors by using a handful of tools to improve your mobile
usability and make your site faster for mobile users. Run your site through
Google's Mobile Friendly Test Tool to confirm if you support mobile users,
use Google's "Test Your Mobile Speed and Performance" tool for actionable
steps to speed up your mobile site, and review the Mobile Usability report in
Google Search Console and check for any errors worth fixing—and if you're
lazy like me, delegate. Send the reports and errors over to your web
developer and get them fixed. Who doesn't like a competitive advantage?
Work through these tools, make your mobile support better than competitors,
and you will crush it in the search results.
Mobile Friendly Test Tool
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Test Your Mobile Speed and Performance – Think With Google
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Mobile Usability – Google Search Console
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-usability
The technical details of building a responsive site are beyond the scope of
this book and could fill an entire book. In fact, it does, I counted close to 17
responsive web design books on Amazon as I wrote this paragraph… That
said, mobile SEO can be ridiculously simple.
If you have a responsive site that delivers the same content to mobile and
desktop users, automatically resizes content to the screen, is fast and is user-
friendly, all you have to do is follow the SEO recommendations in this book,
and your mobile results will be top notch from an SEO perspective.
Alternatively, follow one of the recommended implementations discussed
earlier in this section.
For guidelines, direct from the horse’s mouth so to speak, you can read
Google’s mobile support documentation for webmasters and web developers.
Mobile Friendly Sites – Google Developers
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/

Google's Search Quality Guidelines — and how to

use them to your advantage.
Search quality is an increasingly popular topic in the blogosphere because it
can have a massive impact on rankings. Why is this so? Making sure users
are sent to high-quality and trustworthy search results is critical for Google to
safeguard their position as providing the best all-round search experience.
While this sounds a little vague, you can use Google's search quality to your
advantage and get an edge over competitors. Did you know that Google
publicly published their “Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines ” , updated on
July 27th, 2017? If you didn't, well now you do.
The document's 160-pages long, so presuming you don't consider a dense
whitepaper leisurely reading, I'll list out the most important and actionable
takeaways, so you can use them to your advantage.
Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines - Most Important Factors
In Google's whitepaper, they list out their holy-trio of most important factors
when it comes to search quality. And here it is …
EAT... That's right, EAT... Expertise, Authority and Trust (EAT). Acronym
choice aside, to establish quality, Google are looking at the expertise,
authority and trustworthiness of the page and site. This includes things like
the content quality and how aggressive ads are on your site. The reputation of
the site and its authors, publicly-listed information about the site ownership,
contact details, and several other factors.
Now we know what's important from a top-level perspective, let's zoom into
actionable and practical takeaways straight out of the document that will
affect the average Joe trying to nudge his way up the search results.
Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines—Key Takeaways
1. Real name, company name, and contact information listed on an about
page. If you don't have this information listed on your website, why should
Google, or anyone else for that matter, trust you? Better make sure you
include it.
2. Excessive and unnatural internal structural links across sidebars and
footers. If you've got 150-links in your footer, it's obvious to Google you're
trying to do something sneaky, so be conservative with the footer and sidebar
links. Keep it restricted to the most important pages on your site or what's
useful for your users.
3. Over monetization of content. Specifically, if you are disguising
advertisements as main content, or your advertisements occupy more real-
estate than the main content, than one of Google's search evaluators will
probably flag your site as spam. Take a common-sense approach with your
ads, don't overdo it!
4. List editors & contributors. Are you publishing a bunch of articles under
pseudonyms or generic usernames? Listing editors and contributors, i.e. real
people, is more trustworthy and will increase the perceived quality of your
page.
5. Provide sources. Publishing generic articles en masse without any
reputable sources? You'll get a better-quality assessment, and a higher
ranking, if you list sources for your articles. Listing sources shows the writer
has performed diligence in their research and increases the credibility of the
page.
6. Financial transaction pages. All you drop-shippers and ecommerce retailers
out there stand up and take note—pages associated with financial transactions
(shopping cart, checkout, product pages, etc.) must link to policy pages for
refunds, returns, delivery information, and the terms and conditions of your
site. Think about it from the user's perspective, if you are average Joe shopper
thinking about buying something and the page doesn't list any of this
information, how safe would you feel checking out?
7. Pages offering financial information must be of the highest quality. Google
are stricter with these types of pages, as it falls into their “Your Money or
Your Life” category—meaning it could affect the financial well-being of the
user. If you're publishing this kind of content, make sure you're doing
everything you can to provide high-quality, detailed articles, citing sources,
fully disclosing financial relationships, and making it clear what author or
company is behind the content.
That sums up the most important takeaways from the Google Search
Evaluator Guidelines. If you haven't got them in your site, work ‘ em in and
you'll get a leg up over your competitors, or worse, your rankings could
suffer. And if you really, really want to sit down and read through the 160-
page whitepaper on page-quality assessment, here it is for your enjoyment.
Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines - July 27th, 2017
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchw

Readability — SEO for the future.

One of the strongest ranking factors has been flying under the radar,
overlooked by many SEO professionals in their optimization checklists,
leaving a golden opportunity for those that know about it. I ’ m talking about
readability.
Google have been outspoken about readability as an important consideration
for webmasters. Google ’ s former head of web spam, Matt Cutts, publicly
stated that poorly researched and misspelled content will rank poorly, and
clarity should be your focus. And by readability, this means not just avoiding
spelling mistakes, but making your content readable for the widest possible
audience, with simple language and sentence structures.
Flesch readability has since surfaced in the Searchmetrics Google ranking
factors report, showing a high correlation between high ranking sites and
easy to read content. The Searchmetrics rankings report discovered sites
appearing in the top 10 showed an average Flesch reading score of 76.00—
content that is fairly easy to read for 13-15 year old students and up.
It makes sense readability is a concern for Google. By encouraging search
results to have content readable to a wide audience, Google maximise their
advertising revenues. If Google were to encourage complicated results that
mostly appeal to a smaller demographic, such as post-graduates, it would
lower Google's general appeal and their market share.
You can achieve an on-page SEO boost, while also increasing your user
engagement, by making your content readable to a wide audience. Run your
content through a Flesch readability test. It will look at your word and
sentence usage, and give you a score on how readable it is. Scores between
90-100 are easily understood by an 11 year old student, 60-70 easily
understood by 13 to 15 year old students, and 0-30 best understood by
University graduates. You can use the free tool below, and should aim for a
readability score between 60-100. To improve your score, edit your content
to use fewer words per sentence, and use words with a smaller number of
syllables.
Readability Score
https://readable.io/

How to accelerate traffic and rankings with content

marketing.
One of the most powerful on-page SEO strategies is adding more unique,
fresh content to your site. If you consistently add new pages to your site, you
are going to receive more traffic. In fact, not only can you increase your
traffic, you can receive an exponential traffic increase as you publish more
content.
It’s a no-brainer when you think about it. This is why blogs, publishing and
news-type sites consistently get good results in search engines. More content
means more rankings, more visitors, and more sales. Let’s look at getting
started with improving your traffic by adding fresh content.
1. Post new content on a regular schedule.
If you are going to add new content to your site, you need to decide on a
schedule and stick to it. This might seem obvious, but you would be surprised
at the large number of businesses that talk about starting a blog and never get
around to it. It’s the businesses with a regular roster of adding content to their
site that see regular increases in search rankings, increases in overall search
engine performance, and a growing loyal audience. Without a dedicated
roster or schedule, it will never get done.
If you don’t have the capacity to create content yourself, or a budget to hire a
full-time marketing assistant to create content, try hiring a ghostwriter.
Good quality writers can be sourced between $25-$75 USD per article and
you can regularly churn out fresh content to your heart’s content. Popular
services can put you in touch with talented writers, such as Textbroker or the
Problogger job board.
Textbroker
https://www.textbroker.com
Problogger Job Board
https://problogger.com/jobs/
2. Leverage your social media accounts.
It almost goes without saying, but you should be leveraging social media to
drive traffic to new posts or pages added to your site.
Whenever you post new content, post it across all of your social media
accounts. Then post it again in a couple of days and you will expose your
content to a different segment of fans. You’ll increase your social activity and
as a result get higher rankings.
3. Link up your site to blog aggregators.
Blog directories are an easy opportunity for high-quality backlinks, available
for anyone running a blog. A handful of large authority blog directories
accept site submissions and syndicate content—an opportunity to build up
referral traffic. Simply ensure you have a base level of content to start, and
then submit your site. A link to your blog can be approved within a week or
two.
Here’s a handful of high-quality blog directories accepting submissions:
https://www.alltop.com/
https://www.blogarama.com/
https://blogs.botw.org/
https://portal.eatonweb.com/

How to target featured snippet rankings in Google’s

search results.
Ever searched in Google and saw your answer featured in a giant ranking
sitting just above the search results? These large search results are called
"featured snippets" and can send a mind-blowing amount of traffic if you're
clever enough to achieve one of these types of rankings. While achieving a
featured snippet can be difficult, there's a couple of techniques for achieving
one of these rankings.
Before I jump into the techniques, are you still not sure what I'm talking
about? Quickly Google a couple of questions and look for the giant search
result that answers your question at the top of the search results, you can't
miss it—it's about three times bigger than a regular search result. Here's some
example searches that usually deliver a featured snippet in the results, “how
to get started in real estate”, “how to increase your blog traffic”, and so on...
Fortunately, some clever SEOs have figured out some general techniques and
criteria for targeting these sexy rankings.
1. Your desired ranking must be for a question type keyword. Searches that
aren't phrased as a question generally won't trigger a featured snippet, so
better to focus on question related keywords.
2. Your page must be performing okay generally. You don't necessarily need
to be ranking in the top position, but if you're ranking on page 2 or page 3, it's
unlikely you'll achieve the featured snippet ranking, if this is the case, first
focus on ranking higher. If you're already ranking around positions 1-4, then
you have a greater chance of being featured.
3. Your answer should be clear and concise. It almost goes without saying,
well-written and clear answers have a much greater chance of being featured
then poorly written answers.
4. Provide more valuable information than a simple and direct answer. If your
answer has numbered lists, rich media such as images and videos, and is
generally more helpful than an obvious answer to the question, then you have
a greater chance of being featured.

5. Include a Q&A or how-to section on your site. Increase content in a

question and answer format and increase your odds of being featured for
several pages.
6. Add the HowTo, QAPage, and FAQPage Schema.org code to your page.
While this won’t guarantee results, it can’t hurt. If you are not comfortable
with editing code, you may need to hire a programmer to implement this.
HowTo Markup – Schema.org
https://schema.org/HowTo
QAPage Markup – Schema.org
https://schema.org/QAPage
FAQPage Markup – Schema.org
https://pending.schema.org/FAQPage
~
That sums it up for the on-page SEO chapter.
If you have a small business, the technical factors mentioned earlier in this
chapter are what will make the difference—such as ensuring your site has the
right keywords and is accessible for all users.
If you are doing SEO for a large company and need a large amount of traffic,
regularly publishing new content and ensuring structural areas of your site are
setup correctly are what will make the difference—such as regularly posting
new blog posts, ensuring you have sitemaps working correctly, and no
duplicate content or 404 errors.
What’s most important is you act. On-page SEO is often the easiest part of
SEO. The power is in your hands to fix these areas in your site. Remember
small changes can lead to big results. Put these methods to practice and start
improving your rankings.
Just like the keyword research steps, for readers who want to put the theory
into practice, all on-page optimization tips from this chapter are included in
the SEO checklist. I recommend finishing the book before downloading the
checklist and the on-page SEO steps, so you are familiar with the theory
behind the practical steps.
Link building. How to rank
extremely high on Google.

Why is link building so important?

The previous chapter described how to make your site visible to search
engines and how to optimize keywords by using on-page SEO. If you want to
see your rankings improve by leaps and bounds, then your site needs links.
You may have wondered what makes link building so important, especially
when there are so many factors Google use to rank sites.
The truth is, links are such a strong factor, it is unlikely you will rank high for
a keyword if you are competing against sites with more backlinks.
When you think about it, links are the currency of the web. Each time a page
links to another, it is a vote for the value of the page being linked to. If a page
provides massive value to Internet users, it stands to reason it will be linked
to from other sites. This is why links are such a strong factor in Google's
algorithm.
Link building is the key to ranking your site high in the search engine results.

The dirty little secret no one wants to tell you about

link building.
There are a lot of opinions circulating the Internet about the best kind of links
to build to your site. So much so, they often escalate into heated discussions.
What is the best link? A link from a government site or from a high trafficked
blog? Is it better to get a link from a highly relevant site or from a site with a
lot of social media activity?
The dirty secret no-one wants to tell you about link building is there is no
single best kind of link.
If this weren’t the case, Google wouldn't work. Everyone would go out and
find a way to spam their way to the top of the rankings very quickly. Having
thousands of one type of link pointing to a page is suspicious and a clear sign
the site owner is gaming the system.
That said, as a rule, you should try to build links on authoritative, relevant
and high-quality sites. High-quality, relevant links are much stronger than
links from low-quality, unrelated sites.

How to acquire links and what to avoid in link

building.
There are many stories floating around about business owners being slammed
by Google for no good reason. Don't let the horror stories mislead you.
In most cases, what really happened is the webmaster was doing something
clearly suspicious or outdated, like building thousands of links to their site
from link directories, and then their rankings suddenly dropped off from
Google's top 10 search results.
If you don't exhibit overly spammy behavior in your link building, as a
general rule you will be OK.
These best practices will ensure you acquire links correctly and don't break
Google's terms of service:
1. Acquire links naturally and evenly over time. Your links should be attained
consistently and organically.
In fact, Google has made its approach with assessing link acquisition in
relation to time public knowledge. Patent US20050071741 outlines how
Google analyzes the age of links and the rate they are acquired and then uses
this information to calculate the search results.
If you don’t fancy reading up on patents in your spare time, then just
remember to gradually build up your links over time, so Google sees that
your website is acquiring links organically. Don't go out and buy one
thousand links pointing to your site overnight or you’re sure to set off a red
flag in Google’s system and get into its bad books.
2. As a rule, don't purchase links. Buying links with the intention of boosting
your rankings is against Google's terms of service and you risk being
penalized. These kinds of links may work, but are generally not worth the
potential damage, unless you are confident you know what you are doing.
3. Forget about link-swapping or link-trading schemes. These are completely
obvious to Google, and either no longer work or may harm your site. This
goes against common knowledge, but I've achieved countless number one
rankings for ridiculously competitive keywords without ever swapping links.
Link-swapping is extremely time-consuming and completely unnecessary.
Get by without it.
4. Don't spam message boards, article sites or blog comments with crappy
content. This might work temporarily, but strategies such as these are
outdated very quickly.
5. There are paid networks out there offering to build new links to your site
for a low monthly fee each month. Never use them. These networks are
against Google’s terms of service and using them is a quick way to ensure
you find yourself in hot water with Google.

Anchor text. What's all the fuss?

There has been some controversy around anchor text, as touched on in a
previous chapter. Anchor text is the text contained in a link. Anchor text was
one of the strongest factors for achieving top rankings.
If you had one thousand links to your site with “NFL football jerseys” as the
link text, and competitors only had a handful of links with the same anchor
text, it was likely you would rank number one. That is, until Google’s
Penguin update effectively put an end for SEOs using “exact match” anchor
text as their strategy. Now it is just simply too risky.
Not only is it no longer as effective as it once was, building hundreds of
“exact match” links to a site actually can prevent it from ranking for that
keyword.
So then, you might wonder, what is the best way to build up anchor text?
It should be natural.
It is OK to have your targeted keyword in your anchor text, but it should not
be the only keyword or the main keyword in all of your links, and there
should be a mix of related keywords.
If you think about it, this is a pattern all legitimate sites naturally attract. It
defies logic that a quality site would automatically be linked with the exact
same text throughout the entire World Wide Web.
Look over the below examples to see a bad anchor text profile compared to a
natural anchor text profile:
Bad anchor text – external links
http://www.examplefootballbrand.com/football-jerseys.html
NFL football jerseys - 200 links
Good anchor text
http://www.examplefootballbrand.com/football-jerseys.html
examplefootballbrand - 50 links
NFL football jersey store - 10 links
NFL football jerseys - 5 links
http://www.example.com - 25 links
football jersey store - 5 links
football jerseys online - 5 links
football jacket store - 15 links
click here - 7 links
website - 15 links
The above good anchor text example illustrates the natural way sites
accumulate links over time. Your target keyword should not be the most
linked phrase to the page.
You can learn a lot by looking at the search engine results ranking in Google,
enter high-ranking sites into Link Explorer, and looking at their anchor text.
You'll notice almost every top-ranking page has natural anchor text, like the
good example above.
Track your link-building efforts and keep them in a spreadsheet. This way
you can monitor your anchor text and make sure it fits in with best practices.
Link Explorer
https://moz.com/link-explorer

Simple to advanced link building strategies.

The link building strategies below will help you build up quality links
pointing to your site, and give Google a nudge to rank your site higher,
ranging from simple tactics for the small business, right up to the enterprise-
level SEO agency looking to roll out links on a large scale.
Directory links.
Directory links are a tried and true form of link building that received some
flack in recent years. This is due to Google penalizing spammers who built
ridiculous amounts of low-quality directory links to their site.
Directory links shouldn’t be overlooked. In fact, directory links should be the
first place to start with any link building project. There’s a solid amount of
high-quality business directories where you can get powerful and strong
backlinks built with a minimum of effort.
But just to be safe, your directory links should not make up much more than
10-20% of your total links. They must also be relevant and quality sites, i.e.
not sites with web addresses like seolinksdirectory.com or
freelinksdirectory.com. Sites like these just smell of spam! Before building a
link on a directory, ask yourself, “Does this look like a legitimate and
trustworthy website?” If the answer is no, then move on and focus on
legitimate, quality sites only.
To find relevant directories, use the below search terms in Google, replacing
“keyword” with your targeted keyword or industry, and you can find relevant
directories for your niche:
keyword + submit
keyword + add url
keyword + add link
keyword + directory
keyword + resources
Here is a short list of business directories to get you started:
https://www.manta.com/add-your-company
https://www.linkedin.com/
https://www.hotfrog.com/AddYourBusinessSingle.aspx
http://www.angieslistbusinesscenter.com
https://www.merchantcircle.com/signup
http://www.citysearch.com
https://biz.yelp.com
Stealing competitor’s links.
Stealing competitor’s links is an old-school tactic receiving a resurgence in
recent times, due to Google’s increased focus on links from quality sites,
making it more difficult to find easy link opportunities.
If your competitor has done all the heavy lifting, why not take advantage of
their hard work. Use the below sites to export your competitors’ backlinks.
By looking through their links you can often find link opportunities to build
links pointing to your site. In most cases, you can be confident you are going
after SEO-friendly link sources if the competitor is already ranking well in
Google.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker – Free to try, then $99 per month.
https://www.ahrefs.com/
Majestic SEO Backlink Checker – Free to try, then $49 per month.
https://majestic.com
Link Explorer – Free to try, then $179 per month
https://moz.com/link-explorer
Video link building.
Google loves videos, and it especially loves videos from video powerhouse
YouTube. Probably because Google owns YouTube … If you want the
opportunity to capture visitors from the world's largest video search engine,
posting videos will considerably help your SEO.
Post relevant how-to guides, industry news updates and instructional videos
for the best response from users. Then link to the relevant pages on your site
in the description.
The key to success in video link building is to ensure the video and your
description are related. You should aim to have your targeted keyword or
relevant keywords on the page somewhere.
And don't worry. Your video doesn't have to be on par with the latest Martin
Scorsese masterpiece. It can be a simple 5 or 10-minute video, educating
visitors with useful knowledge about your topic. Just focus on making it
contribute value for the viewer.
The tools below can help with quickly creating videos and uploading them to
the web.
CamStudio
https://camstudio.org/
CamStudio is a free, open source screen recording software allowing you to
record high-quality screencasts from your own computer. You can download
the video files in high quality after you have finished. This product only
works on Windows, Mac users may need to find an alternative like using
Quicktime Player ’ s native screen recording function, or an app like
Camtasia.
High-quality sites you can easily visit, upload videos and get backlinks from:
https://www.youtube.com/
http://www.veoh.com
https://www.dailymotion.com/
http://www.metacafe.com
http://www.youku.com
https://www.archive.org/
Link bait.
Link bait is a new and effective strategy for building high-quality and
powerful links on a large scale. Link bait is great because you create content
once, but you can have thousands of people over the Internet sharing and
linking to your content, while you sit back and put your feet up.
But what is link bait exactly? Link bait is any kind of compelling content that
naturally acquires links from other sites as a result.
While there is an art to creating link bait successfully, you would be surprised
how easy it is to earn links and social media activity with this strategy. The
key is, your content must be so valuable it would almost be worth paying for.
To create this content, you should use your expertise or even hire researchers
to put together juicy industry content that lends itself to being shared. If there
are already 10 blog posts or whitepapers on the same topic, then you ’ re
doing it wrong. Try and make it original, substantial and useful.
Wrap up this content into a whitepaper, top 10 list, an easy to understand
infographic, or a downloadable resource and make it compelling enough for
visitors to read and share.
Promote this content heavily through your site and social media accounts.
Encourage readers to share the post at the bottom of the content. Make
sharing the content as easy as possible and you will maximize results.
Next up, find popular link bait in your industry or niche.
Then use a link analysis tool such as Ahrefs or Link Explorer to pull a list of
sites linking to the popular content. Send out a quick email blast to site
owners and bloggers to let them know about your bigger and much better
resource.
If you really want to take link baiting to the next level, write and publish a
compelling press release about your link bait content. With a press release, it
can be exposed to thousands of journalists and potentially has a chance of
attracting media coverage.
You might be wondering what a successful link baiting campaign looks like.
I've listed examples below:
WordPress SEO
https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
Joost de Valk is well known in the SEO industry, in some part due to his one
page guide to WordPress SEO that is updated every month or so. This guide
has earned many links and shares over many years.
101 Motivational Business Quotes
https://www.quicksprout.com/2009/12/07/101-motivational-business-quotes/
Excellent example of a great link bait article that went viral, and could be
outsourced for pennies on the dollar.
Types of link bait:
- Infographics
- How-to guides
- Beginner guides
- Breaking news
- Top 10 lists
- Industry reports
- Whitepapers
Pictochart -Free to start
https://www.piktochart.com/
Great service for infographic generation, has an easy drag and drop interface
to put infographics together in minutes.
Prlog
https://www.prlog.org/
Prlog offers entry-level free press release syndication services, with
additional coverage for an added fee.
PRNewswire
https://www.prnewswire.com/
Many PR firms will simply write a press release and then release it to
PRNewswire and charge a premium for doing so. Cut out the middleman,
write up your press release yourself, and you can get massive PR for a
fraction of the cost of hiring a PR agent. Packages start at $425 USD and
scale up for increased syndication.
Finding guest post opportunities.
Guest posting has become standard practice for many link builders, for its
effectiveness in getting high-quality and highly-relevant and contextual links
—the type of links Google loves.
Finding guest post opportunities is fairly straightforward. Simply do a few
Google searches with the following search terms and you'll find some quality
placements. This strategy does require that yourself or your writer produce
articles with a reasonable standard of quality... Articles that are well-written,
researched, articulated, and preferably citing sources, are more likely to get
social shares and high user engagement—which will increase the strength of
the links. Further, if you have a reasonable sized social platform behind you
—the editor or site owner might be more enticed to post your blog post.
On the other hand, if you try this strategy on a large scale with cheap, poorly-
written outsourced articles with bad grammar, providing little benefit for
users, it's possible you could harm your rankings. Quality is critical for a
successful guest posting strategy.
Try the following search queries in Google, replacing “ keyword ” with your
industry, niche or topic, for finding guest post opportunities. And use the
Google Chrome extension, Link Clump, to copy and paste the search results
into a spreadsheet, so you can reach out to the blogs for a guest post
placement—which will be covered later in this chapter.
keyword "guest post by"
keyword "guest post"
keyword "guest article"
keyword "guest author"
keyword "contributor"
keyword "guest contributor"
Link Clump
https://tinyurl.com/link-clump-chrome
Broken link building.
Broken link building is a new, but effective strategy. With this new strategy,
you can reach out to quality sites with broken links on their pages, and use
this as an opportunity to convince the site administrator to provide an updated
link to your site.
When you find a broken link, let them know the broken link exists and you
have an alternative resource on your site that will benefit their readers. With
this strategy, you should create a linkable resource on your site. This makes it
very easy for the webmaster to point the link to your replacement.
Use the formulas below to find potential pages with broken links, replacing
“keyword” with the keyword you are targeting:
keyword useful links
keyword useful resources
keyword useful sites
keyword recommended links
keyword recommended resources
keyword recommended sites
keyword suggested links
keyword suggested resources
keyword suggested sites
keyword more links
keyword more resources
keyword more sites
keyword related links
keyword related resources
keyword related sites
If you want to automate this process, the service below will do the heavy
lifting, and give you a list of sites with broken links and contact details so
you can quickly reach out to the webmaster.
Broken linkbuilding - $67 monthly
http://www.brokenlinkbuilding.com
This tool is comprehensive, but comes at a price. By typing in keywords you
are targeting, the broken link building tool will find a solid amount of broken
link opportunities. Saves time and finds quality opportunities.
Broken brand mentions.
Broken brand mentions are a fast, simple and reliable form of link building
you can use for almost every SEO project. It goes like this: in some cases,
when someone mentions your brand they forget to post a link. Track
mentions of your brand, and where suitable, reach out and ask for a link back
to your site. Use the below tools to track mentions of your brand. If you see a
mention of your brand without a link, send a quick email to the author, and
they will often be happy to link to your site.
Brand monitoring sites I’ve found useful:
Social Mention -Free to try
http://www.socialmention.com
Social Mention is a very powerful brand monitoring tool. At the writing of
this book, you cannot receive email alerts. Social Mention is completely free
and powerful, so it’s worth checking out.
Mention - Free to try, pricing starts at £29 per month.
https://en.mention.com
Mention is a powerful brand-monitoring tool that will send an email alert
when your brand is mentioned online, so you can respond quickly.
Paid links.
Paid links are against Google’s terms-of-service, these below link building
tactics do work and can fly under the radar. Needless to say, if you’re feeling
daring, you’ve been warned and I take no responsibility for what happens as
a result of paid link strategies.
Donate to charities & non-profits.
Charities and non-profits sites often have a donors’ page. Search for “site:.org
+ donors” or “site:.org + sponsors” in Google for a list of organizations that
have these pages, offer a donation, and request a listing on the page.
Better Business Bureau.
Links from the Better Business Bureau are among the best links you can
receive. Better Business Bureau links will pass authority and trust. Check
your listing to see if you are already linking back to your site, and if you’re
not already a member, then consider signing up.

Link outreach—scaling up high quality link

building campaigns.
Link outreach is a common and powerful link technique in use by SEO
professionals these days, and for good reason—it's an effective way to scale
up your high-quality and relevant links.
What to avoid with link outreach campaigns.
Before we jump into link outreach techniques, Google publicly stated
guidelines on this practice and it's important to know what to avoid, so you
don't get into Google's naughty book.
Here's a direct quote of the combination of factors Google consider bad-
practice, as discussed in their guidelines published May 2017, about large-
scale article campaigns:
- Stuffing keyword-rich links to your site in your articles.
- Having the articles published across many different sites; alternatively,
having a large number of articles on a few large, different sites.
- Using or hiring article writers that aren ’t knowledgeable about the topics
they ’ re writing on.
- Using the same or similar content across these articles; alternatively,
duplicating the full content of articles found on your own site (in which case
use of rel= ‘ canonical ’ and rel= ‘ nofollow ’ is advised).
The guidelines are a little vague … The reason being, Google can't
completely outlaw guest-posting, nor can they outlaw site owners talking
with other site owners to collaborate—that would hardly be fair and an over-
reach on Google's part.
Google are mostly concerned the articles are relevant, high-quality, posted on
relevant sites, aren't stuffed with extreme numbers of links pointing to your
site, and you're not annoying a billion site owners with spammy
unpersonalized email blasts filling up their inboxes. Avoid these practices,
and you'll avoid getting a slap by Mr. Google.
Here's the official guidelines from the guys over at Google HQ if you want to
read up further.
A reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns - Google Webmaster
Central Blog
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2017/05/a-reminder-about-links-in-large-
scale.html
Steps for link outreach campaigns.
Typically, there are two steps for link outreach campaigns:
1. Prospecting - finding link opportunities and finding contact information.
2. Outreach - writing and sending emails, follow ups, replies and managing
relationships.
We've already covered link opportunities, such as looking through
competitor ’ s backlinks and finding guest post opportunities, so let’s jump
into the nitty gritty of finding contact information and conducting a link
outreach campaign.
Finding contact information.
Finding contact information is easy with the right tools. First, you can use a
standalone tool for automatically finding contact details on sites while
browsing through link opportunities, like Hunter.io's very handy Chrome
extension which automatically finds contact details for you, or you can make
things simple and try an all-in-one email outreach platform covered in the
next section, that both finds contact details and sends emails.
Secondly, you should track all your link opportunities in a spreadsheet or
Google Doc, and make sure you leave a personal note for each link
opportunity, which will be later dynamically inserted into your email (more
on this later).
Hunter
https://hunter.io/
Hunter is purely focused on finding contact details and very good at it. It has
a nice Chrome plugin that shows you the contact details it can find for a
particular site while browsing. Free plans include up to 100-contact
information requests, for more contact requests plans start at $39 per month.
Personalization.
Whichever outreach platform you use, you should always ensure your email
is personalized in some way. This includes addressing the author or editor by
name, mentioning a recent article that captured your interest, a similarity
between your websites, or how you have a particular resource or topic that
aligns with something the site owner is passionate about. Leave a note of this
in your spreadsheet while reviewing opportunities...
Remember, there's a big difference between contacting a site owner with a
relevant, personalized email and a mutually-beneficial opportunity for
collaboration, and a big spammy email blast to a thousand site owners with
the same email template—which could quickly get you in hot water with
Google. Don ’ t skip the personalization.
Outreach platforms and scheduling emails.
There's a growing number of outreach platforms due to the increasing
popularity of this technique. Here are some popular options on the market.
Some only send emails, others offer end-to-end outreach campaign
management, including finding prospects, contact details, sending emails,
automated follow ups, the whole kit and caboodle. Anyways, here they are.
Mailshake
https://mailshake.com/
Mailshake is pure-outreach. You will need to provide contact information
yourself. It is very effective at sending personalized email campaigns, and
you can import personalization info including name, address and a personal
message via a csv file. Includes automatic follow-ups, email template
libraries, and more. Plans start at $19 per month.
Buzzstream.
https://www.buzzstream.com/
Buzzstream is the darling of many link builders and content marketers. It is
an end-to-end outreach platform, meaning it can find contact details, send
emails, track relationships, and more. Buzzstream doesn't allow automatic
follow ups nor one-click sending for your campaigns, so a bit of manual work
is required to run campaigns through Buzzstream. Plans start at $99 per
month.
Ninja Outreach
https://ninjaoutreach.com/
Ninja Outreach is another end-to-end outreach platform, including finding
contact details, sending emails, personalization, automatic follow ups and
more. I have noticed the majority of bloggers on this platform ask for you to
pay to contribute to their site, which is a downside in my opinion. Pricing
starts at $69 per month.
Pitchbox
https://pitchbox.com/
Pitchbox is an enterprise-level outreach platform, including finding contact
details, personalized emails, automated follow ups, detailed reporting, and
more. Pitchbox is more suited for larger teams or campaigns, SEO agencies
and SEO professionals. It comes at a higher price point, but sometimes the
preferred tool for serious SEO guys and gals, due to having more features and
flexibility than the other platforms. Plans start at $195 per month.

Additional link building opportunities.

The aforementioned link building techniques are enough for 99% of readers
to push rankings higher than competitors. For link building junkies who’ve
exhausted the above options, here’s a handful of strategies listed in rapid-fire
fashion. These are intended for advanced SEO users, who are already actively
blogging and building links.
1. Create a Twitter profile.
Adding a link in a Twitter profile is a big opportunity disguised as a small
opportunity. Simply by creating a Twitter profile, and listing your website in
both the “website” and “bio” fields, you will get a handful of links from high
domain authority aggregators that scrape your information from Twitter. Sites
that do this include Klout, Twellow, Twitter Counter, and many others. To
make these links more powerful, you can make your profile active without a
large overhead of time. Use a service such as Hootsuite to auto-post blog
posts from RSS feeds relevant to your niche, to make your profile active.
Build up a base level of followers to your account with a small budget using a
service like Twitter Ads or Twitter Counter - Featured Users.
Hootsuite
https://www.hootsuite.com/
Twitter Ads
https://ads.twitter.com
Twitter Counter – Featured Users
https://twittercounter.com/pages/featured
2. Pingback & trackback link building targeting authority sites.
You can get a handful of easy-win authority links, including .edu and .gov
links, by linking out to blogs in your industry with pingbacks enabled.
Pingbacks are notifications from your blog sent to other blogs when you
mention an external post. Blogs with pingbacks enabled will show a link back
to your website in their comment section when this happens.
Here’s how a comment will look if it is a trackback or pingback:
Digital nomad blog
[…]read the latest tips on how to travel with only your carry on luggage[…]
Pingbacks build up valuable relevant links back to your website. They can
also be a traffic source, picking up engaged readers from other sites and
sending them to your site.
Run a quick search on Google to find the top 50 or top 100 blogs in your
industry, then go through and find the ones with trackbacks enabled. For
example, to find digital nomad blogs, you might type into Google:
intitle:“digital nomad” “comment”
Next up, in your upcoming blog posts, link out to blogs with pingbacks
enabled. For this to work successfully, keep in mind you need to link out to
actual posts, not the home page.
3. Create your own authority links.
The most powerful link building strategy is to simply go out and make your
own authority links. By buying a previously owned website or domain, you
can turn it into a blog and unlimited source for powerful, highly relevant
links back to your site.
There are readers out there who will scoff at this strategy and there are
readers out there nodding their heads—it’s the readers nodding their heads
that know how powerful this strategy is. Links from authority sources in your
market are much more powerful than any other kind of link, and the easiest
way to get authority links is to create your own authority site. Consider
buying a website more than three or four years old with a relevant domain,
for a more powerful effect.
Be careful with this strategy. If you create a network of sites like this and
obscure the ownership details at the domain registry, and only link back to
websites you own, you risk being labeled as the owner of a private-blog-
network by Google and could potentially receive ranking penalties. However,
if you create a legitimate, authoritative resource creating genuine value for
users, you should be fine.
Flippa
https://flippa.com
Market place for buying and selling websites.
Sedo
https://sedo.com
Buy and sell domains.
4. Relationship link building.
If you’ve been following the online advice on blogging and link building in
the past couple of years you will have noticed a recurring theme: building
relationships with other bloggers in your industry is a powerful way to earn
strong backlinks to your site.
While this strategy is only relevant for users with active blogs on their site,
fortunately, creating these relationships and getting the links is easier than it
sounds. Other bloggers in your industry are just as dependent on links as you
are. By linking out in your blog posts to other bloggers you 1) give a valuable
backlink to the blogger, and 2) give recognition to the blogger for being an
authority in the industry. Everyone likes recognition, and the law of
reciprocity comes into play here, you will find most bloggers are grateful for
being mentioned and happy to link back in a social media post or future blog
post.
Try creating or curating popular blog posts into a top-level summary, then
send a quick email to the bloggers mentioned, let them know, and very
politely ask for a mention or linkback. The best part of this strategy is
curating blog posts; it is often easier than creating content from scratch.
Example email:
Hey [expert blogger],
Just thought I’d give you a heads up. I’ve just featured you in my post [xyz]
…
Hope you don’t mind. If you’re happy with the article, I would really
appreciate a mention on social media or perhaps a link back. Or if you want
anything changed, feel free to let me know.
Really enjoyed your post on [xyz].
Thanks!
Example expert round-up post:
Experienced business travellers reveal their favorite travel tips
https://www.businessinsider.com/business-travel-tips-from-expert-travelers-
2015-6/?IR=T&r=SG
5. Testimonial link building.
An awesome way to get high quality, relevant links back to your site is to
give out testimonials. Sometimes you can actually earn a link back to your
site from somebody else’s homepage, possibly one of the strongest types of
links to get! I will sometimes go as far as purchasing a product just to get a
testimonial link. Give this strategy a try by finding a few sites with
testimonials and offering your own. Of course make it easy for the webmaster
by including all the information they need, such as a photo, your name, job
title, testimonial and link back to your site. The key is to look for businesses
or services with a testimonials page already, or a testimonials carousel or
widget on their homepage. Speed up your search with a couple of Google
search queries:
"keyword" +testimonials
"keyword" +recommendations
"keyword" +"client testimonials"
"keyword" +"what customers say"
Social media & SEO.

Is social media important for SEO?

Social media has become integral to the way we use the Internet. Important
content is not only linked, it is shared, liked, tweeted and pinned. How people
use the Internet has drastically changed, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed over
at the Googleplex. Many of the independent studies on Google’s ranking
algorithm show a large correlation with high-ranking pages having strong
social media activity.
While the official stance from Google is that they do not directly use social
signals in their algorithm, the SEO community pretty much agrees it is
certainly a factor in achieving rankings. Disagreements aside, I can tell from
my own experience, sites with large social followings consistently get higher
rankings in a shorter timeframe.
Not only can you use social media to build social activity to increase your
overall SEO strength, you can use social media to regularly create backlinks
that are free and easy to build. It also increases referral traffic back to your
site and engages previous customers. As a rule, social media should be a part
of every SEO project, or even every marketing project.

Facebook & SEO.

Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. What’s popular on
Facebook is essentially a snapshot of public opinion, and Google have noted
this by making Facebook activity a very strong factor in their algorithm. You
should consider using Facebook for every SEO project. If you only have the
time or budget to use one social network in your SEO strategy, use Facebook.
To improve your site’s Facebook social activity, share content from your own
site on your Facebook page on a regular basis.
Each time you do this, you receive more exposure from your fan base, and
you also build up social activity around the content on your site. Be careful to
mix this up with relevant, engaging non-commercial content for your user
base, so you don't turn them off and maintain high levels of engagement.
Examples include infographics, inspirational quotes, inspirational photos, and
so on.
Build up your audience by including a Facebook follow button on your site,
your email signatures, and your thank you or success pages.
If you want to speed up building your audience, you can use Facebook
advertising to build a relevant audience of local customers. This is a good
strategy if your competitors in the rankings have a larger following and you
are looking to beat them. You can also use Facebook advertising to increase
exposure for your posts, or even run advertising campaigns for a promotional
offer. Facebook advertising stands out as a great way to build up an audience,
social activity and referral sales for projects with a budget.
Facebook for business
https://www.facebook.com/business
Facebook advertising
https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/products/ads

Twitter & SEO.

Twitter is filled with discussion on the world's latest news and events. In
many cases, groundbreaking news stories are released on Twitter before the
world's major news outlets. The death of Osama Bin Laden is the perfect
example—it was leaked on Twitter by a former chief of staff to the US
Defense Secretary and within minutes it was all over the news.
Google have recognized this and use Twitter activity in their algorithm.
While it may not be as strong as other social networks, you can use Twitter to
build up your overall SEO strength. Twitter is a great social network to
weave into your SEO strategy as you can schedule a lot of your tweets in
advance without coming across as too spammy, and manage your account
with only a small commitment of time and effort.
Schedule tweets to your pages such as Hootsuite and start building up your
tweet counts on your pages. Mix this up with relevant and informative tweets
about your industry. You should aim for a maximum of 12 tweets per day. 12
Tweets per day is roughly the limit you can post without annoying your
followers. If you’re lazy like me, you can schedule all of your tweets about 3
months in advance.
If you want to encourage site visitors to tweet your content for you, include a
“tweet this page” link on every page or blog post on your web site.
Tweetdeck -Free
https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
Free and easy Twitter management software. You can install Tweetdeck on
your computer and manage your whole Twitter account from inside the
program. Popular features include managing multiple accounts, scheduling
tweets, and arranging feeds so you only see updates from Twitterers you're
interested in.
Hootsuite -Free to start. $29 monthly for power users.
https://www.hootsuite.com/
More advanced than Tweetdeck, you can use Hootsuite to schedule tweets,
analyze social media traffic, manage multiple accounts, create social media
reports to monitor your success, and much more. Recommended for power
users or automating multiple accounts.

Other social networks.

Let’s face it, we'd all love to play around on social networks all day, but we
don't have the spare time to be always looking for great ideas and sharing
them endlessly on social media accounts.
If you have limited resources, focus on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
If you are looking for an extra edge, doing SEO for a large brand, or maybe
you have an army of helpers waiting for your command, you can gain
significant boosts by expanding your social activity to several social media
sites.
Setup an account on the below networks, posting on the networks most
relevant to your business:
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn is the Facebook for professionals. LinkedIn is a fantastic
networking tool if you are in the business-to-business industry and looking to
build up your personal brand or the brand of your site. If you want to increase
your effectiveness on Linkedin, join groups and participate in discussions,
post relevant updates about your industry and post content in the news feed.
Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.com/
Pinterest has become one of the fastest-growing social networks in a very
short timeframe. Pinterest’s fast-growing user base is primarily made up of
women. The site has effectively turned into a giant shopping list of wish-list
items. If your target audience is women, you should be on Pinterest.
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/
Initially a mobile app to help users make their photos look pretty, Instagram
has skyrocketed from a fledgling mobile app to competing with major social
networks in just a few years. Instagram limits the amount of links you can
post, which essentially means the links from your profile on Instagram are
much more powerful. If you work in a fashion or image-heavy industry,
Instagram is a must-have social network to incorporate into your SEO and
overall digital strategy.

Social media analytics.

If you invest time and effort building up your social media profiles, you will
want to track your results so you can separate the parts of your strategy that
are successful and not so successful.
Social media analytics is different compared to other web analytics, because
social analytics are geared to measuring the conversation and interaction of
your fan base with your brand. Using the software listed below, you can
monitor results and get valuable insights on how to improve your social
media efforts:
Sprout Social - Free for 30-days. $99 per month for regular use.
https://sproutsocial.com/
Sprout Social is a great web analytics and social media management package
that allows you to track the performance of your social media profiles over
time. It has a free trial, suited to advanced level use and offers powerful
analytic reports for major social networks.
Hootsuite - Free plan available. Paid plans start at $29 per month.
https://hootsuite.com/products/social-media-analytics
Hootsuite is quoted many times in this book and for good reason—Hootsuite
is a robust social media management software allowing for control over many
social networks, as well as powerful web analytics insights. Its paid plans are
also quite affordable for pro-users.
Google Analytics Social Tracking - Free
https://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics social-tracking features are great for tracking basic social
interactions that occur when visitors are on your site. It is free and includes
an out-of-the-box solution with the standard setup. To see social reports, log
into Google Analytics, click on the “Acquisition” tab in the main menu, then
“Social”.
Web analytics in a nutshell. How to
measure your success.

Web analytics changed how we do business in the 21st century. Now we can
find valuable insights into customers, including what was previously difficult
or impossible to discover, including information on website visitors’
demographics, interests, online behaviors, and more. We can find out what
works and what doesn’t, cut underperforming marketing campaigns and
increase budgets for winning campaigns. Simply put, web analytics have
made it easier to grow almost any business. Read on for a quick guide
covering the nuts and bolts of web analytics, and how to put web analytics to
work for your business.

Why use Google Analytics?

You may have already heard about Google Analytics. Google Analytics is the
web analytics platform used by the majority of sites. It has its quirks, but it’s
the best readily available, all-round analytics tool available for understanding
site traffic. And the best part is it's free.
If you don’t have Google Analytics installed, put down this book, install
Google Analytics now and then slap your web developer. I'm not joking.
Without Google Analytics set up, growing a business online is like trying to
pilot an airplane blindfolded. Without Google Analytics it's difficult to find
out what works and what doesn’t, identify issues and solve them before they
turn into bigger issues, and get a sense for the general direction your business
is headed. Google Analytics is usefulness for monitoring the performance of
a business and is applicable to about 95% of businesses.
To get started with Google Analytics, head on over to the below URL and
click on “sign in”. Create a Google account if you do not have one already,
and walk through the simple steps to get started. You may need help from
your web developer if you are unable to edit the code on your website.
Google Analytics
https://www.google.com/analytics/

How to use Google Analytics.

Let me tell you something a little risqué. On its own, most data is useless.
You heard correctly, for real awareness and insights, we need to be able to
compare data and identify trends over time. There are two ways to analyze
and understand data in Google Analytics in reference to time:
1. Compare two date ranges.
Click on the date field input in Google Analytics. Enter two timeframes and
you can compare them both. Useful date comparisons include comparing this
week's performance to last week's performance, last month's performance to
the month prior, and last month's performance to the same month the
previous year.
2. Look at the charts over a long time frame.
Simply look at the charts over the longest time period possible and look for
trends, without comparing date ranges. This is not so effective for finding
hard-to-find information or identifying granular insights, but this approach is
useful for a bird’s eye view of the direction your traffic is heading.
Note: Seasonality is a factor affecting many businesses. Sometimes you may
see a downturn in traffic, but this may not necessarily indicate your site is
performing poorly. It could be that your market experiences a downward
trend in certain months. If your business is experiencing a downward trend,
use the “compare two date ranges” approach and compare the current month's
traffic to the same month last year. If you are seeing increases, then you
know your site is performing well, irrespective of seasonal trends.

Acquisition.
Acquisition is an area of Google Analytics any business owner or marketer
should spend a lot of time reviewing. The Acquisition section of Google
Analytics breaks down where your site traffic is coming from. Without
keeping a close eye on your traffic sources, it is almost impossible to make
informed judgments about the performance of your site or your marketing.
Click “Acquisition” in the main sidebar on the left. In the “All Traffic”
section you can see actual amounts of traffic you’ve received from a given
source. The Channels section listed under “All Traffic” is of special interest.
This lists the main sources sending customers to your website. From the
“Channels” tab, you can dig further for deeper insights into the performance
for specific sources sending customers to your site, such as social visitors,
search engine visitors, email visitors, and so on.

Organic Search report.

The Organic Search report is essential for monitoring your performance in
search engines. Within the Organic Search report, you can actually see how
many times you received a visitor from a search engine.
It’s worth mentioning, a few years ago Google made changes to Google
Analytics that still has many search engine marketers and marketing
professionals shaking their fists at the sky. Early in 2012, Google changed
this tool to hide a large portion of the keyword information, making it
difficult to get exact information on the keywords customers are using to
arrive at your site. Thanks, Google!
Now when someone types a phrase into Google, if they are signed into a
Google account while browsing, the keyword the visitor searches for will
show up as a “not provided” keyword in Google Analytics report. When this
happens, you have no idea what that person typed into Google before arriving
at your site.
The amount of keyword information that has been obscured by Google has
gradually increased, but don't be too concerned, we can still measure overall
performance of search engine traffic by looking for total increases or
decreases in the Organic Search report.
To view the Organic Search report, click on the Acquisition tab on the left
sidebar, click on “ Acquisition ” , “All Traffic”, click on “Channels”, and
click on “Organic Search”.

Segments.
Imagine if you could narrow down to a particular segment of your audience,
such as paid traffic, search engine traffic, mobile traffic, iPad users, and so
on, and instantly see how many inquiries these users have made, how much
time they are spending on your site, what country they are from, and how
many sales they are making. This feature exists and it is called Segments
Segments are powerful. With Segments, you can identify portions of your
audience that potentially generate more inquiries or sales than other
customers. You can even identify portions of your audience having difficulty
using your site, and get insights to fix these areas for better performance.
To use Segments, simply click on the “Add Segment” tab at the top of every
page within Google Analytics, and you can choose from the list a large
number of Segments for deeper insights.

Common web analytics terms explained.

Pageviews.
A Pageview is counted each time a user loads a page on your site.
Unique Pageviews.
Similar to a Pageview, but if one user loads a page several times it will only
be considered one Unique Pageview.
Session.
A session is what occurs when a visitor arrives at the site, and then at some
point closes the browser. If that visitor returns again, this is counted as an
additional session.
User.
If a user visits your site, and then returns at a later stage, this is counted as
one unique User.
Bounce Rate.
If a visitor visits your site, and then leaves without visiting any more pages,
this is a bounce. The percentage of visitors who bounce is your bounce rate.
A common question among marketers and business owners is: what is a good
bounce rate? There is no general rule. Bounce rates vary greatly between sites
and industries. If you find a particular page with a very high bounce rate
(+70%), this could be an indicator the visitors do not like the content or they
are experiencing technical issues.
Conversion rate.
One of the most important metrics to monitor is your site conversion rate. A
conversion rate is the percentage of Users completing a desired action. The
action could be filling out an inquiry form, downloading a product, or buying
something from you. If you receive one hundred visitors, and three of these
visitors complete a sale, this would be a three percent conversion rate.
Goals.
Goals are custom goals you can set up within Google Analytics to track
particular business goals or targets you may have for your site.
Common goals to set up include newsletter signups, product downloads,
inquiry form completions, and so on.

Call tracking — powerful analytics for every

business.
Web analytics and VOIP tech has advanced at a lightning pace in the past
few years. Tracking and attributing phone calls to marketing channels was
previously an arduous task for the local or international marketer, but finally,
it's now both cheap and easy to track the source of phone calls in your
marketing campaigns.
Better yet, you can track your calls to a great level of detail, including
discovering the source of each phone call (Google, Facebook, Google Ads,
etc.) and even discover the particular keyword or ad a phone call originated
from.
In case you're wondering how this wonderful technology works, most call
tracking platforms use a fancy technology called “dynamic number
insertion”, presenting different phone numbers to different users, depending
on where they came from, then tracking it in the platform and presenting the
data to you, all neat-and-tidy, on a reports screen or a mobile app.
Before running through popular tools for tracking calls, let's cover important
points to safeguard your search engine performance, and make sure you get
setup correctly.
Key points for implementing call tracking.
1. If you rely on SEO, or local SEO, it's important to keep your “real” phone
number displayed on your website, for both search users and Google-bot.
Make sure your developer is aware of this, and keep your “real” number
displayed at all times to these users in the call-tracking platform. If you
don ’ t do this, the “ NAP ” (Name, Address, Phone number) data displayed
on your site could become inconsistent, and have a negative impact on search
rankings.
2. Make sure the call tracking platform integrates with Google Ads and
Google Analytics.
3. If you're using a CRM system, like Salesforce and so on, you might want
to check the call tracking system links up with your particular CRM.
4. Finally, if you're on WordPress, or another CMS, ensure the call tracking
platform has a plugin for your particular CMS for easy setup. If the platform
has a plugin for the software running your site, this often means you can get
setup in under an hour or so.
Popular call tracking platforms on the market right now.
Call Rail
https://www.callrail.com/
Call Rail is popular for its ease-of-use, international support, integrations
with Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress, Salesforce and flexibility. It
also includes cool features like text messaging, geo-routing, voicemail and
more. Plans start at $30 per month.
Call Tracking Metrics
https://www.calltrackingmetrics.com/
Call Tracking Metrics is another popular platform, also offering international
support, Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress integrations, and overall,
similar features to Call Rail. Some online user reports mention preferring Call
Rail for its simplicity and flexibility, and found Call Tracking Metrics a little
difficult to navigate, but in the end, it's often best to trial both platforms
initially and see what works best for your business. Plans are a bit cheaper
than Call Rail and start at $19 per month.

Other web analytics tools.

There are many web analytics tools out there to help with improving the
performance of your site. Google Analytics is great for understanding overall
traffic performance, but if you want to delve deeper, check out the following
tools for greater insights:
Crazy Egg - Free to start. Plants start at $9 per month.
https://www.crazyegg.com/
If you want a visual indication of how visitors behave on your site once they
arrive, Crazy Egg is a fantastic tool. With Crazy Egg, you can get heat maps
of where visitors click on the page. You can also see heat maps of how far
visitors scroll down the page.
Visual Website Optimizer – 30 day free trial.
https://vwo.com/
Visual Website Optimizer is a popular split-testing analytics tool. With
Visual Website Optimizer, you can split test different variations of your site,
and see which version makes more sales or conversions, and increase your
overall sales.
Google Tag Assistant
https://get.google.com/tagassistant/
Google Tag Assistant is a handy free tool, for diagnosing any issues with the
tracking codes for all the fancy web tracking tools you ’ ve setup on your site.
It ’ s especially useful for developers diagnosing issues, when you ’ re having
obvious problems with your web analytics.
Troubleshooting common SEO
problems & how to fix them.

Dealing with Google can be massively frustrating at times. Customer support

barely exists, and trying to understand why your site isn't playing well with
Google can spiral into a wild goose chase.
Don't let Google's lack of customer support or the horror stories dishearten
you. Most of the time, if a site is experiencing Google problems, it is only
temporary. SEO problems are rarely irrecoverable.
Usually it's simply a matter of finding out the underlying cause of the
problem—more often than not, the cause isn't what the popular blog posts are
saying it might be. This sometimes means fixing several items. Once all
fixed, you have stacked the deck in your favor and you are more likely to
make a speedy recovery.
This chapter outlines common SEO problems that plague web site owners.
If you are not at all technically inclined, I urge you to read the section on
getting additional advice, or even consider getting professional help if your
site is experiencing serious SEO issues.

What to do when your site is not listed in Google at

all.
This is a common problem among webmasters and business owners alike.
If you have just launched a brand-new site, it is possible Google has not
crawled your site yet. You can do a quick spot check by typing
“site:yoursiteaddress.com” into the Google search bar and checking to see if
your site comes up at all. If it doesn't, it’s possible Google's spider hasn't
crawled your site and doesn't know it exists.
Typically, all that’s required for Google to pick up your site is to generate a
handful of links to your site and some social activity.
Tweeting a link to your site is a quick way to ensure your site is indexed by
Google's software, typically within 24 hours. Try to share your site from a
handful of social networks for faster results.
Check Google again in 24 hours with the “site:www.yoursite…” search query
and see if any pages from your site come up. If you do see pages, this means
Google has indexed your site.
If this doesn't work, ask your web designer to setup Google Search Console
for you, login and see if there are any errors. If there are errors, Google will
outline the steps to fix them, so Google can see your site.
Google Search Console's handy URL inspection tool is great for
troubleshooting and finding issues. It confirms if your page is supported by
Google, not suffering from any penalties, successfully appearing in the index,
is mobile friendly and more. To access the URL inspection tool, click "URL
inspection" in the left sidebar in Google Search Console. If you cannot see
the link, it's possible you're using the old Google Search Console. Click the
blue "Try the new Search Console" link at the top left and take advantage of
the URL inspection tool's awesomeness.
Google Search Console
https://www.google.com/webmasters/

What to do when your business is not ranking for

your own business name.
A business not coming up in the top position in Google for searches for the
official business name is a surprisingly common issue among brand new
sites. Google is smart, but sometimes you need to give Google a nudge to
associate your new site with the name of your brand.
This solution is easily fixed by building links to your site, with some of the
links with your brand name as the anchor text. This can take up to a couple of
weeks for Google to see these links, connect the dots and realize your site is
the real deal.
The fast way to get the ball rolling is to do a quick search for the business
directories used in your country—Whitepages, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and so
on—fill out a listing for your business on each site and include a link back to
your web site. The more links the better, but you should be aiming for a
minimum of 50 links. In 95% of cases, this will solve the problem of a site
not coming up in the top results of searches for the business name.
If this doesn’t work, setup Facebook and Twitter accounts for your business,
filling out as much information about your business as possible in the profile.
Then do a post a day for about two weeks, mixing in links to your site in the
posts.
If you still can't get your site ranking high enough, use Link Explorer to spy
on competing sites ranking higher for the brand name. Do their pages have
more backlinks than the total amount of links to your site? If this is the case,
you are going to need to build more links.

What to do when your rankings have dropped off.

Here's a sad truth about SEO: if you achieve a top ranking, it may not keep its
position forever. There are billions of web pages competing for top positions
in Google. New sites are being created every day. It requires an ongoing
effort to keep pages ranking high.
If your rankings have dropped off from the top position, and are slowly
moving their way down the search results, it ’ s possible you have been
affected by a Google update or spam filter. Read through the Google Updates
chapter later in this book, and also look through the additional resources for
keeping updated on new Google updates in the same chapter.
On the other hand, it's more likely your competitors have simply acquired
more links or more social activity than your site. Use Link Explorer to spy on
competitors, find out how many backlinks they have, how much social media
activity they have, and set these amounts as your target to build your rankings
back up.
Next, it's time to start a link building campaign with the targeted keywords as
outlined in the chapter on link building.

How to seek professional help for free.

Finding the right SEO help can be frustrating for site owners. There is a lot of
information to navigate, with varying levels of quality and accuracy. It’s
difficult to get in touch with SEO practitioners at the top of their field.
That said, there are sites that can put your questions in front of world-leading
experts of almost any topic for free. Use the below sites for highly technical
responses, and you can create an army of Internet experts to try to solve your
problem for you.
The key to success with the below resources is to be specific. The more
specific you are, and the more information you provide, you increase your
chances you will receive a detailed answer that will point you in the right
direction.
For greater results, post your question on all of the sites below, and sit back
and wait for the answers to come in. You will get more answers and will be
in a better position to consider which solution is best.
Moz Q&A
https://moz.com/community/q
Moz's Q&A forums used to be private, but were eventually recently released
to the public. Here you can speak with a large number of SEO professionals
directly and attract high quality answers to your questions. Great for SEO
specific problems.
Pro Webmasters
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/
The Pro Webmasters Q&A board can have your questions answered by
webmasters of high-performing sites.
Quora
https://www.quora.com/
Quora is an all-round Q&A posting board, where you can get a question
answered on almost anything. On Quora, questions are sometimes answered
by high-profile experts. Marketers, business owners, you name it, there are
many leading industry authorities posting answers to questions on Quora.
Wordpress Answers
https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/
If your site is built on Wordpress, it's inevitable you will eventually encounter
some kind of technical hurdle. The Wordpress Answers Q&A board is a great
resource to seek out help.
Local SEO. SEO for local businesses.

Why use local SEO?

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have seen listings for local
businesses appearing at the top of search results in Google and Google Maps.
Local listings—previously known as Google Place page listings, then
rebranded as Google+ pages, now known as Google My Business listings—
however they will be titled next, they are a powerful marketing tool for small
businesses.
Let’s look at some statistics from the horse’s mouth. The following facts
were discovered by Google after conducting a study on the behavior of local
customers.
- 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information.*
- 50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone
visited a store within a day.*
- 18% of local searches on a smartphone lead to a purchase within a day.*
* Understanding Consumer’s Local Search Behavior – May, 2014
https://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/how-advertisers-can-extend-their-
relevance-with-search_research-studies.pdf
Holy mackerel, if you are a local business owner and those figures aren’t
making your jaw drop, I don’t know what will. Now that we know if you own
a local business, local search can be the Yoko Ono to your John Lennon, let’s
delve deeper and find out what makes a local search result.
Local search results differ from traditional organic search results by
representing a local business instead of a normal web page, and appearing at
the top of the search results and on map listings.
Users can get business contact details, opening hours and reviews and find
the information they need quickly and easily, instead of having to dig around
a clunky business site.
The local listings can be a powerful tool to attract traffic. In many cases, local
listings can lead to many more inquiries than regular SEO rankings. But does
this mean you should scrap traditional SEO in favor of local SEO? Nope.
You can do both and potentially double the amount of potential traffic you
can receive.

How to rank high with local SEO.

Ranking high with local SEO takes a different approach than traditional SEO.
Google's algorithm is looking for a different set of signals to determine the
popularity of a business to decide how high to rank it in the search results.
If you think about it, if a restaurant is really popular in a city, a whole bunch
of links from all over the world probably isn't the best factor to determine
how valuable the business is to the local area.
A better indicator of the importance would be mentions of the business’s
name and phone number across the web, customer reviews, and details on the
website that show the business is based in the area being searched.
Below is a list of the most important ranking factors Google use for local
listings:
1. Proximity of address to the area being searched.
2. Proper Google My Business category associations.
3. Quality and authority of inbound links.
4. Consistency of citations on primary sources (Google My Business, your
website, etc.)
5. Domain authority of website.
6. Product/service keyword in Google My Business title.
7. Quality and authority of structured citations.
8. Consistency of citations on Tier 1 citation sources (most prominent
business directories, etc.)
9. Click-through rate from search results.
These are the strongest factors fetched from Moz’s annual Local Search
Ranking Factors survey. If you want to rank high in the local search results,
all you have to do is ensure your site and Google My Business page have
more of these features than your competitors.
For a complete breakdown of local SEO ranking factors, visit the below link,
where the world's leading authorities on local SEO publish an industry survey
on the local ranking factors every year.
Moz's Local Search Ranking Factors
https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Getting started with local SEO.

To get started, the first step is to create your business page on Google My
Business. Visit the URL below, and complete every area of your profile as
possible. This means creating a detailed description of your business,
available payment methods, and so on. The more information you complete,
the more you increase your chances of ranking your page higher.
Google My Business
https://www.google.com/business
When creating your business listing, make sure you choose the most accurate
category for your business, e.g. if you provide plumbing as a service, you
want to choose “plumbing” as your category, not “trades” or “home repairs”.

Building citations.
Citations are the links of local SEO. A citation occurs each time your name,
address, phone number (NAP) is mentioned on the web. The more citations
you have, the more likely your site will rank high. The easiest places to build
citations are the many local business directories available for businesses.
While there’s many online directories for creating business listings, the
following websites would be a good start for a US-based business.
https://www.facebook.com/business
https://www.linkedin.com/
https://www.yellowpages.com/
https://biz.yelp.com/
http://www.local.com/
https://www.whitepages.com/business
https://www.manta.com/
http://www.citysearch.com
https://foursquare.com/business/
https://www.merchantcircle.com/

Building reviews.
Citations and reviews are the link building of local SEO. If you are only
building citations, you only have half of the equation covered. To rank
highly, you need to ensure your business accumulates online reviews.
Many businesses struggle with this. This is because it’s tough to get
customers to fill out reviews! You have to make it easy for your customers.
Include links to your business Google My Business page on your site, email
signatures, flyers, and business cards, prompting customers to leave a
review. Encourage customers at the end of each sale or transaction to leave a
review. By creating every opportunity possible for customers to leave a
review, you can significantly increase reviews.
But whatever you do, don’t buy reviews. This is a quick way to get into
Google's naughty books. Purchased reviews can be picked up by Google's
filters and are likely to be excluded from your business profile anyways.

Supercharging local SEO with photos and videos.

For better or worse, for many people, taking selfies and photos of what
they're eating for dinner has become a daily habit—and it comes with no
surprise Google are capitalizing on this ubiquitous trend. Late August 2017,
Google enabled video and uploads from the general public to Google
Business listings on Google Maps. An underused marketing opportunity
flying under the radar—for now—and a savvy local business owner can use
this to their advantage.
Why are photos and videos important for a local business?
Whether or not the number of photos and video's uploaded to a Google
Business listing is a ranking factor is unknown—it wouldn't be surprising if it
is, it would be a solid indicator of the popularity and activity of a local
business. But you can be sure Google will stay tight-lipped on the matter.
Either way, the more photos and videos uploaded to your Google Business
page will lead to higher user-engagement with your profile, which will likely
lead to higher rankings.
But the real advantage lies in enticing more customers to your business
through imagery. Ever heard the phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand
words?” Customers researching a local restaurant, cafe or hotel are heavily
focused on photos when deciding where to go. Just look at your own
experience—ever taken a peek at the photos and videos of a restaurant or
hotel, and a particular photo put you over the edge? If you haven't included
photos and videos in your local SEO efforts, you're missing out on a piece of
the pie. Here's two simple approaches to get amongst the action.
1. Encourage customers to share their experience at your business.
Encouraging customers to share their experience at your business with a
photo or video is an effective way to build up authentic photos associated
with your page. It'll build up the perceived popularity of your business too.
Why not take it to the next level, and entice customers with a free drink or
discount off their meal by sharing their experience?
For the general public to upload photos or videos, all they need to do is tap on
your listing on Google Maps, scroll down and click “add a photo”, and done!
Just take note, videos can only be done via Android phones. Official guide by
Google listed below.
Add, Remove, or Share Photos and Videos – Google Maps Help
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/2622947
2. Add photos to your business profile yourself.
If you're running a restaurant, hotel, cafe, or any other local-type business for
that matter, you should have a handful of professional-looking photos
uploaded to your profile at a bare minimum—so customers know what to
look forward to when visiting your business, or what they ’ re missing out
on …
Fortunately, adding photos to your Google Business profile is easy as pie.
Simply log in to Google My Business, click photos on the left menu and
upload away. For additional documentation, check out the official guide from
Google HQ below.
Add Local Business Photos - Google My Business Help
https://support.google.com/business/answer/6103862

Local SEO ranking checklist & essential resources.

While looking at your local competitors and working to beat them is probably
the best overall strategy, progressing through the following checklist will put
you on your way to ranking high at the top of the local search results.
1. Verify your business profile on Google My Business.
2. Fill out as much information as possible on your Google My Business
profile, including description, category associations, images and videos.
3. Include your business name and location somewhere on your website, this
could be your contact page or home page.
4. Include your full business name, address and phone somewhere on your
site, these should be grouped together so Google will register it as a citation.
5. Include the appropriate schema.org tags in your website markup, following
their specification for local businesses at the following URL.
Schema.org Local Business Specifications.
https://schema.org/LocalBusiness
6. Encourage customers to review your business.
7. Submit your website to the major business directories like Yelp, Yellow
Pages, CitySearch and so on. You can use tools like Moz Local to submit
your business to all of the major directories in one go.
Moz Local.
https://moz.com/local
8. Cross-check your business listings for correct NAP data. These details
need to be consistent across your Google My Business listing, website
contact page, and external business listings.
A downloadable copy of the above steps is also available in the SEO
checklist at the end of the book.
Essential local SEO resources for keeping up to date.
Just like traditional SEO, local SEO constantly changes and becomes more
complex over time. To keep your skills sharp you need to stay up to date with
the latest knowledge in the industry. The resources below should be
considered essential reading for anyone looking to hone their local SEO skill
set.
Local SEO Guide
https://www.localseoguide.com/
Andrew Shotland’s Local SEO Guide is an enduring commentary of local
SEO techniques and updates in the industry. His useful blog has been around
for as long as local SEO has been a thing and popular among the SEO
community for good reason—the blog’s regular contributions and willingness
to give away valuable and actionable advice.
Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
https://blumenthals.com/blog/
Mike Blumenthal is another stalwart blogger providing a running
commentary on local SEO. This is a great resource for keeping abreast of the
very latest changes in the local search space as they are rolled out.
Moz Local Learning Center
https://moz.com/learn/local
The pre-eminent pundits at Moz have compiled a very useful and detailed
guide for managing all aspects of local marketing. Their guide is both
extensive and easy to read, making it a great resource for both beginners and
advanced practitioners.
The New Meta: JSON-LD,
Microdata, Schema.org & Facebook
Open Graph.

JSON-LD, RDFa, Microdata & Schema.org. Where

to start?
A growing problem has emerged on the Internet in the past couple of years.
There's literally billions of sites and webpages with an infinite amount of
information—all completely unorganized... A bureaucratic nightmare!
There are endless pages about movies, customer reviews, local businesses,
product catalogs, and so on, and there has been no standardized way of
organizing or presenting this information.
A need emerged for a universal method to make it easy for search engines to
quickly recognize this information.
Hence the birth of meta data or semantic data markup—new technologies
making it easier for search engines—and other technologies—to crawl,
recognize and present your content to Internet users.
Considering banging your head against the wall, wondering why you're
reading such a soul-destroying dry topic? Well, don't throw this book out the
window just yet...
These new technologies allow greater control over your search listings,
making it easier for search engines to crawl your site, and achieve “rich
results” like the example below, with which you can achieve higher click-
through rates and get more eyeballs on your content. Think of this technology
like meta description tags on steroids.
Why Use Schema.org & JSON-LD?
So now we know what we can do with this new technology, where do we
start? As always with new technologies, there's an ongoing debate about the
best to use—JSON-LD, RDFa, microdata, the list goes on.
Well I won't waste your time with a technical debate. Google, Yahoo and
Bing joined together in 2011 to hit the nail on the head and created a
standardized approach with schema.org—a reference site for markup
technology, which allows you to cover all your meta-data needs.
Google openly stated JSON-LD, and its sister-site schema.org, is their
preferred technology, and made it clear not to mix meta data technologies for
fear of confusing their spider.
We're here for high rankings and traffic, not a lengthy diatribe on each
individual technology, so let's go with what Google recommends for the
purposes of this book.

How to use schema.org.

Google supports the below rich results in the search results. If you have any
of the below, your site can benefit from use of schema.org's recommended
additional markup for your site.
Listing Enhancements
- Breadcrumb
- Corporate Contact
- Carousel
- Logo
- Sitelinks Searchbox
- Social Profile
Content types
- Article
- Book
- Course
- Dataset
- Event
- Fact Check
- Job Posting
- Local Business
- Music
- Occupation
- Podcast
- Product
- Recipe
- Review
- TV and Movie
- Video
We'll use an example of a business listing to see how it might normally be
coded, compared to schema.org's recommendation.
Standard code for business details:
<h1>Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware</h1>
<p>A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing to accent your stay in
Mexico Beach.</p>
<p>3102 Highway 98</p>
<p>Mexico Beach, FL</p>
<p>Phone: 850-648-4200</p>
JSON-LD formatted code for business details:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "LocalBusiness",
 "address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"addressLocality": "Mexico Beach",
"addressRegion": "FL",
"streetAddress": "3102 Highway 98"
},
"description": "A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing to accent your
stay in Mexico Beach.",
"name": "Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware",
"telephone": "850-648-4200"
}
</script>
You can see how the JSON-LD code example from Schema.org gives the
search engine a friendly nudge to recognize the information as a business
listing, such as the address and the phone number.
While the above example will be just enough if you have a simple business
listing, you or your developer will have to visit Schema.org and follow their
documentation to ensure your data is correctly formatted. Read Google’s
‘Search Gallery’ guide, for an all-encompassing guide to the many types of
rich results achievable in the search results. Finally, use Google’s ‘Rich
Results’ testing tool to ensure your structured data registers correctly with
Google.
Schema.org
https://schema.org/
Search Gallery of Structured Data – Google
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery
Rich Results Test – Google
https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

Facebook Open Graph.

While we know schema.org is the best approach for adding meta data to your
site, there is one additional meta data technology you should also use.
Facebook's Open Graph language allows you to determine how your site
listing appears when shared on Facebook.
If you do not include Facebook's Open Graph code on your site, when a user
shares your content on Facebook it will show a plain listing on the news feed,
with the responsibility on the user to describe the article and make it worth
reading. If you include Facebook Open Graph code, it comes up looking
sexy, just like your search listings if you have been using your meta title and
meta description tags correctly.
By putting your best foot forward, and making your listing show up correctly
on Facebook, you will encourage more customers to click to your site, and
increase the amount of likes and shares of your page. This will increase the
social signals of the page.
Here's an example of properly formatted meta code using Facebook Open
Graph. As you can see, there are only minor tweaks required to make your
page show up nicely on Facebook's news feed. So go ahead and use it on
your site!
<title>Buy Baseball Jackets Online</title>
<meta property='og:type' content='site'>
<meta property-'og:description' name='description' content='Wide range of
Baseball Jackets online, for all leagues and players. Free delivery and free
returns both-ways in USA.'/>
If you're worried about confusing search engines by using several “structured
data” technologies at the same time, such as Open Graph and schema.org,
don’t worry, you won't have any problems.
Facebook Open Graph is mainly used by Facebook's web crawler, not by
search engines, so you can use Open Graph and schema.org in tandem
without any problems.
If you want to read up further on Facebook's Open Graph, or if you have
complex types of listings on your site, checkout Facebook's Open Graph
guide below.
Open Graph Protocol
http://ogp.me
Powerful SEO tools.

The following tools can help find link building opportunities, diagnose site
issues, create easy-to-understand SEO reports, make Google crawl your site
faster and much more. Ultimately, the below tools make it easier to achieve
high rankings, and can potentially save hours, days or even weeks of time.
Are there more SEO tools out there than in this list? Sure. SEO tools are a
dime a dozen. The following is a selection of the tools I have found useful
and to list out the tools mentioned in this book, for ease of reference. Some
are free, some are paid, but most offer a free trial long enough to start
optimizing your site. I have no affiliation with any of these sites, I’ve just
listed tools that I find useful. So, jump in and have fun.

Research tools.
KWfinder
https://kwfinder.com/
KWFinder is a fairly new research tool to the market, providing traffic data
for keywords, estimated SEO difficulty, competitive data on sites ranking in
the top 10, and much more. Its well-rounded feature set means you could use
this tool alone for your keyword research without having to use multiple
tools. Plans start at $29.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
The Google Ads Keyword Planner has been mentioned several times
throughout this book for good reason, it allows you to download estimated
traffic for keywords users are typing into Google's search box—powerful
knowledge to have in your SEO toolkit. You can see how many times a
keyword has been searched in Google, you can also narrow this down by
country and even device type, including mobile phones and so on. During
recent years, Google have clamped down on the free data available to non-
paying users, to access all the research data you will need an active Google
Ads campaign and must be regularly spending at least a modest amount of
money.
Google Trends -Free
https://www.google.com/trends/
Google Trends provides powerful stats of search trends over time. Great for
seeing how your market performs overall, and how demand changes over
time for your keywords.
Moz - Free and Paid.
https://moz.com/tools
No book on SEO would ever be complete without a mention of Moz. Moz
offers keyword analysis, brand monitoring, rankings tracking, on-page SEO
suggestions, search engine crawl tests, and much more. An essential toolbox
for every SEO practitioner, from beginner to advanced.
SEOQuake - Free
https://www.seoquake.com/
The SEOQuake toolbar gives you a powerful set of stats for any site you
visit, right within your browser.
SEOQuake also has a great option that gives you the important stats for pages
ranking in Google's search results. A great tool for snooping on competitors
and doing market research.
SEOQuake's powerful toolbar works on Google Chrome, Safari & Firefox.
Ubersuggest - Free
https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
Automatically download the auto-suggested keywords from Google’s search
results for a nice, juicy collection of long-tail keywords.

Optimization tools.
Google Page Speed Insights - Free
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Google Page Speed Insights is a fantastic tool provided by Google to help
speed up your site. Google Page Speed Insights will give you a score on how
well your load time is performing, and provide a simple set of suggestions to
forward to your developers and speed up your site.
Google Snippet Optimization Tool - Free
https://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
This handy little tool lets you type out title tags and meta tags and see a live
preview of how your site will appear in the search engines.
Google Search Console - Free
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
Google Search Console is another great tool, and if you haven't got Google
Search Console set up, drop what you are doing and set it up now!
Google Search Console will report urgent messages if there are any severe
problems when Google comes along and crawls your site. You can also
submit your sitemap directly to Google from within Google Search Console,
meaning you know Google has been given a friendly nudge to come around
and pick up all the content on your site. This is a must-have SEO tool for
every site.
HTTP Status Code Checker
https://httpstatus.io/
If you have ever setup a URL redirect, or asked your developer to, it's always
a good idea to check and ensure the redirect has been setup correctly.
Use the redirect checker to make sure your redirects are returning successful
responses to the web browser, so you can feel confident Google is picking it
up properly too.
Lighthouse – Tools For Web Developers – Google
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/
Lighthouse provides reports on website performance, accessibility, adherence
to programming best practices, SEO and more—with actionable steps on
improving each of these areas. Lighthouse is best suited for advanced
developers working on complicated projects, opposed to finding easily
identifiable improvements for simple websites.
Robots.txt Analyzer - Free
http://tools.seobook.com/robots-txt/analyzer/
Many robots.txt files can often have slight errors that are difficult to pick up,
especially for larger sites. Run your robots.txt file through this tool for a free
analysis to see if there are any errors.
Robots.txt Generator -Free
http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/robots.txt/
If you’re lazy like I am, you’ll love this free robots.txt generator. Works great
for the most basic or advanced robots.txt users to create robots.txt files
quickly and easily.
Schema Creator - Free
https://www.schemaapp.com/
Great and easy-to-use tool to automatically generate your schema.org
markup.
Pingdom Website Speed Test - Free
https://tools.pingdom.com/
The Pingdom Website Speed Test is a great tool for monitoring how quickly
your site is loading, and find opportunities to make it load even faster.
With the Pingdom Speed test you can see how fast your site loads, and how
large the files are on your site. You can easily find the large files on your site
that are chewing up resources and bloating your load time.
Test My Site - Think With Google
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
This tool is both easy-to-use and indispensable for finding easy-win load
speed improvements for mobile users—and handy for seeing how your site
performs compared to competitors.
Fortunately, the handy tool provides free reports and if you follow the
recommendations and get your site performing better than competitors, you
can make out like a bandit in the search results.
Xenu’s Link Sleuth - Free
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Don’t be put off by the old-school design on the page that offers this very
powerful SEO-tool for free.
Xenu’s Link Sleuth is one of the most powerful SEO-tools available, that will
crawl your entire site, or a list of links, and offer very powerful and juicy
stats for each of your pages, such as stats on which pages have 404 errors,
301 redirects, server errors, title tags, meta desc tags, the list goes on! This
tool has been around for years, and is a must-have tool for the more advanced
SEO practitioner.
XML Sitemaps - Free to trial. $19.99 for large sites.
https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
XML Sitemaps is a fantastic tool for creating an XML sitemap to submit to
Google. Useful for sites that do not have a built in XML sitemap
functionality.
The tool automatically formats the sitemap so it is in the right format for
Google and other search engines. With XML Sitemaps you can create a
sitemap for your site within minutes.

Link building tools.

Link Clump
https://github.com/benblack86/linkclump
Possibly one of my favorite tools. Link Clump is a free Chrome extension
that allows you to highlight and copy all the links on the page in one click.
Great for copying the Google search results into a spreadsheet, without
having to individually visit each page.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker – Free to try, then $99 per month.
https://www.ahrefs.com/
Ahrefs offers probably one of the most up-to-date indexes of links pointing to
websites, and a highly accurate tool for analyzing links pointing to your site
—and to your competitors. It also offers other competitive data, like keyword
suggestions and estimated traffic numbers, so you can be sneaky and copy
keyword ideas from your competitors.
Buzzstream - Free trial. $24 per month starter plan available.
https://www.buzzstream.com/
Buzzstream helps you find linkbuilding opportunities and conduct link
outreach campaigns. Buzzstream will even find the contact details on the site
for you.
Hunter
https://hunter.io/
Hunter is purely focused on finding contact details and is very good at it. It
has a nice Chrome plugin that shows you the all the contact details it can find
for a particular site while browsing. Free plans include up to 100 contact
information requests, for more contact requests plans start at $39 per month.
Mailshake
https://mailshake.com
Mailshake is pure-outreach. You will need to provide contact information
yourself. It is effective at sending personalized email campaigns, and you can
import all the personalization info including name, address and a personal
message via csv file. Includes automatic follow-ups, email template libraries,
and more. Plans start at $19 per month.
Buzzstream.
https://www.buzzstream.com/
Buzzstream is the darling of many link builders and content marketers. It is
an end-to-end outreach platform, meaning it can find contact details, send
emails, track relationships, and more. Buzzstream doesn't allow automatic
follow-ups nor one-click sending for your campaigns, so a bit of manual
work is required to run campaigns through Buzzstream. Plans start at $99 per
month.
Ninja Outreach
https://ninjaoutreach.com/
Ninja Outreach is another end-to-end outreach platform, including finding
contact details, sending emails, personalization, automatic follow-ups and
more. I have noticed the majority of bloggers on this platform ask for you to
pay to contribute to their site, which is a downside in my opinion. Pricing
starts at $69 per month.
Pitchbox
https://pitchbox.com/
Pitchbox is an enterprise-level outreach platform, including finding contact
details, personalized emails, automated follow-ups, detailed reporting, and
more. Pitchbox is more suited for larger teams or campaigns, SEO agencies
and SEO professionals. It comes at a higher price point, but it is sometimes
the preferred tool for serious SEO guys and gals, due to having more features
and flexibility than the other platforms. Plans start at $195 per month.

Moz - Link Explorer - Free for limited access. $99 per month for pro users.
https://moz.com/link-explorer
Link Explorer is a must for understanding the links pointing to your site and
competitors’ sites. Cheeky little tricks with Link Explorer include exporting
competitors’ backlinks and looking over these links for opportunities to build
links to your site. For higher level of detail, I do prefer Ahrefs when it comes
to analyzing links, but a paid-membership for Link Explorer also gives you
access to Moz ’ s entire suite of SEO tools.

Web analytics tools.

Google Analytics
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
Google Analytics is the market leader in web analytics, and the best part is
it’s free. It allows you to track the visitors on your site, where they came
from, how much money they spent if you are running an online store, and
you can even track online enquiries if you are running a local business. It ’ s
an essential tool for every website.
Call Rail
https://www.callrail.com/
Call Rail is popular for its ease-of-use, international support, integrations
with Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress, Salesforce and flexibility. It
also includes cool features like text messaging, geo-routing, voicemail and
more. Plans start at $30 per month.
Call Tracking Metrics
https://www.calltrackingmetrics.com/
Call Tracking Metrics is another popular platform, also offering international
support, Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress integrations, and overall,
similar features to Call Rail. Some online user reports mention preferring Call
Rail for its simplicity and flexibility, and found Call Tracking Metrics a little
difficult to navigate, but in the end, it's often best to trial both platforms
initially and see what works best for your business. Plans are a bit cheaper
than Call Rail and start at $19 per month.
Crazy Egg - Free to start. Plants start at $9 per month.
https://www.crazyegg.com/
If you want a visual indication of how visitors behave on your site once they
arrive, Crazy Egg is a fantastic tool. With Crazy Egg, you can get heat maps
of where visitors click on the page. You can also see heat maps of how far
visitors scroll down the page.
Bonus chapter: Google’s algorithm
updates.

You need to be informed about Google’s updates to ensure your site doesn't
trigger Google's spam filters. In some cases, you can take advantage of
updates to the algorithm and get higher rankings. In this chapter I will walk
you through some of the major recent updates to be aware of. And at the end
of this chapter, I will show you resources for catching wind of new updates as
they are released. Let’s get started.

HTTPS update & HTTPS upgrade checklist.

In an age of security scandals, mysterious hacking groups, Government
surveillance programs—and celebrities sending nude selfies to each other—
it’s easy to understand why Google, Apple and other tech companies are
encouraging everyone to be more secure. Part of this trend is Google’s
advocacy for website encryption. On August 26th, 2014, Google publicly
confirmed they started using SSL security certificates as a ranking signal.
Since Google publicly acknowledged site encryption is a positive ranking
factor in its algorithm, and stated its intention to strengthen this factor in
coming years—it’s probably a good idea to install an SSL security certificate
on your site.
If that isn ’ t motivation enough, as of October 2017, Google Chrome started
showing security warnings to users visiting sites without SSL-enabled. The
security notice shows up in Chrome's address bar, stating that the website is
“Not Secure”, with a strong focus on non-SSL sites containing web forms,
and when users visit non-SSL sites in Incognito mode.
If you’re wondering what the hell I am talking about, you have probably seen
website encryption in action when you log in to your Internet banking or
Gmail account. When you see a green padlock at the start of the web address
and it has HTTPS at the front, this means the connection is encrypted and the
site owner has installed a security certificate and verified ownership of the
site.
Website encryption provides a direct connection between the user and the
website server, a bit like a tunnel. Because it’s encrypted if anybody tries to
eavesdrop on this connection any information intercepted will look like
gibberish. The only parties who can read the information are the web server
and the user. Pretty neat, huh?
Unfortunately, installing a security certificate isn’t enough to get an extra
boost to your rankings. There is a migration process required to ensure
Google picks up everything correctly.
I’ve listed basic steps below for upgrading your website without any loss in
rankings or SEO juice. But this process is more technically involved than
weaving a few keywords into the page, you should read the supporting
documentation by Google, ask your developer to do this, and maybe even
consider using professional SEO help before completing this process.
1. Contact your web host or domain registration provider to install a security
certificate. Common fees can range from $50 to $500 per year, depending on
the type of certificate.
2. Make sure both HTTPS and HTTP versions of your site continue to run.
3. Upgrade all internal resources and internal links in your HTML code to use
relative URLs. This includes references to HTML files, CSS files, Javascript
files, images, and all other files referenced in your HTML code. This means
instead of referring to internal resources in the website code with an absolute
address (e.g. http://www.yourwebsite.com/logo.jpg), it should use a relative
address (e.g. ./logo.jpg).
4. Update all of your canonical tags to point to the new HTTPS version of
your site.
5. Upload 301 redirects for all HTTP URLs to point to the new HTTPS
secured URLs.
6. Verify the new HTTPS version of your site in a new profile in Google
Search Console.
7. Upload an XML sitemap to the new HTTPS Google Search Console
profile. This sitemap should include all of the old HTTP pages from your site
and the new HTTPS pages. We are submitting the old pages to encourage
Google to crawl the old pages and register the redirects.
8. Update all links on your social media accounts and other marketing
materials to point to the new URLs.
If you want a downloadable copy of this checklist, the SSL upgrade steps for
SEO are covered in the free SEO checklist at the end of the book.
Before working through the SSL upgrade steps, make sure you or your
developer read through the support guides by Google on performing this
upgrade.
Securing your site with HTTPS – Google Search Console Help
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543
Site Moves With URL changes – Google Search Console Help
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049

Google’s RankBrain & machine learning

announcement.
In late October 2015, Google announced that its machine-learning artificial-
intelligence technology titled RankBrain had been secretly influencing the
search results. Does this mean sinister super-intelligent robots created by the
genius minds at Google are slowly taking over our search results? Not really.
Over 15% of Google’s daily searches have never been searched before. On
these never-before-seen types of searches, Google don’t have any historic
user engagement data to ensure it is delivering the right answer.
Understandably, Google needs a strong capability to understand the actual
meaning behind a user’s search query as they type it into the search box.
Enter RankBrain, RankBrain forms connections between clusters of words to
get a better understanding of what a searcher really wants, even if the
searcher only gives Google a small amount of information. It then delivers a
relevant answer to the searcher’s query, even if the results with the best
answers don’t necessarily use the exact words as the user. RankBrain is also a
machine learning technology, which means it progressively learns from
analyzing old searches, so it gets better over time.
In the above example, simply by searching “When was Hillary’s husband
born”, the first search result lists Bill Clinton’s birth date at the top of the
search results. That’s some solid guesswork from Google! We can see
Google’s strong capability at inferring the actual meaning behind our search,
even though I only hinted at the person I am searching about. This is
Google’s RankBrain technology at work, forming connections behind the
scenes. As popular trends come and go, presumably, this matching
technology is automatically applied in new searches and organically changes
to adapt with the times.
You may be wondering about the impact on professional SEO. The impact is
very little. As yet, there have been no disadvantages or advantages reported
by SEO professionals, except, it’s as important as ever to ensure your page
contains related keywords in addition to your targeted keywords. Always
ensure Google has enough information as possible to understand the topic of
your page, because now it’s possible Google will deliver your page for even
more search results.

HTTP/2—The powerful technology that can double

your load speed.
The nice folk at Google, Facebook, Firefox and Chrome covertly worked in
an underground cave for several years, developing a secret technology that
can almost triple the load speed of most web pages. I’m joking about the cave
but the technology is very real and now you can use it on your website, too!
HTTP/2 is a technology that significantly improves how servers
communicate with web browsers, resulting in dramatic speed increases. On
February 11th, 2016 the Google Chrome Developers Blog announced Google
Chrome browser’s support of this new technology, while deprecating a
similar technology called SPDY. SPDY, the older technology for improving
browsing speed, was originally created by Google, so for them to
decommission SPDY in favor of HTTP/2 might give you an idea of what
Google thinks about this new technology…they love it!
If you ’ re not already familiar with HTTP/2, and wondering what I ’ m
rattling on about, HTTP is the technology that all web servers use to transmit
files between web servers and web browsers. The old HTTP standard has
been used for about 25 years, but being quite old, it wasn’t really designed
for the high demands of modern web users. The way it sends files is a bit like
doing your grocery shopping by purchasing one item individually, packing it
in your car, and then returning to the store to purchase the next item, and
continuing this way until finished. When you make a request to load a page
from the server, your computer needs to open and close a new connection for
each file needed to load the page, and can only have a maximum of 6
concurrent connections per web server.
Well HTTP/2 completely revolutionizes the way computers communicate
with servers. When your browser contacts the server, the server compresses
all the files you need, and sends them over in one tiny little package. The end
result is dramatically decreased loading times for all web users, or
dramatically increased load speeds—however you want to look at it.
Needless to say, with Google’s strong ranking advantages associated with
fast loading websites, this is a solid technique to have in your SEO toolbox.
Feeling skeptical? Check out the below resource comparing HTTP and
HTTP/2 speed differences side-by-side. You might be surprised by the
difference.
HTTP/2 Technology Demo
http://www.http2demo.io/
While a great technology, there are a few caveats. Web browsers only widely
support HTTP/2 on websites secured with encryption and security
certificates, so you’ll need one of those to get started.
HTTP/2 is supported by most browsers and web servers, but it can be a little
tricky to setup on your web server, and something that should only be
performed by a professional web developer or server administrator.
If you want to get started with HTTP/2, the best starting point is to contact
your web developer and web hosting company to see if HTTP/2 is supported
on your server.
I'm going to make a shout out to the smart guys over at Shopify—would you
kindly consider enabling HTTP/2 on your servers? Hundreds of thousands of
online retailers are missing out on this load speed advantage, significant sales
increases, and millions of shoppers are being delivered slow websites as a
result of not having HTTP/2 fully enabled … Apologies for the digression,
and I ’ ll get off my high horse now.
Describing how to install HTTP/2 is well beyond the scope of this book, with
the infinite amount of web server configurations often requiring different
installation methods, but the below resources can be a good starting point for
technical information on enabling it on popular web servers, if you ’ re not
technically inclined, send them over to your web developer.
How to setup HTTP/2 support in Apache
http://www.rundef.com/setup-http2-support-in-apache
Moving to HTTP/2 with NGINX
https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-9-5/
HTTP/2 Frequently Asked Questions
https://http2.github.io/faq/

Google’s Interstitial update – A.K.A. “Death to

mobile popups.”
In August 2016 Google announced on January 10, 2017 site displaying
obtrusive “interstitials” to mobile users wouldn’t rank as highly in the search
results, and they would banish this type of advertising behavior from the
cosmos! If you’re wondering what “interstitial” means, it’s Silicon Valley
tech-speak for a popup ad.
Let’s have a quick read over the announcement from the team at Google and
then look at what this update means for businesses:
“Here are some examples of techniques that make content less accessible to a
user:
Showing a popup that covers the main content, either
immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or
while they are looking through the page.
Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss
before accessing the main content.
Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page
appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has
been inlined underneath the fold.”
Helping Users Easily Access Content On Mobile
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-
content-on.html
In other words, with the exception of cookie verifications and legal notices,
age verifications, and app install banners, all other popups will lead to poor
performance in the mobile search results.
I’m on the fence on this update, I know from experience a lot of site owners
and business owners achieve significant sales from subscribers that sign up to
their popups. Dictating the marketing of site owners to such a degree could
be considered an over-reach from Google. By making it more difficult for
site-owners to maximize the sales of their website visitors, are Google
encouraging site owners to spend more money on Google Ads and
remarketing campaigns to encourage more customers to return to their site?...
I’ll let you decide.
On the other hand, a significant number of sites load unnecessarily slow and
make mobile web browsing a clunky, slow and unreliable experience. Quite
often, the cause of the slow loading is the site owner clogging up their site
with complicated scripts and files that power the popup advertisements—
sorry, I mean interstitials. Google have played a significant role in nudging
website owners to update their technology and make browsing the web an
effortless and usable experience, which is good for the Internet community as
a whole.
Whatever your feelings about this update, this is going to be a positive
change for users. The way we browse the web on our phones will become
faster and more reliable as a result. Just ensure you disable mobile pop-ups or
you will likely see some drop-offs in your mobile search visitors. Death to
popups, long live browser notifications!

Accelerated Mobile Pages—A.K.A. Mobile web

browsing on steroids.
Have you ever asked yourself, “What are Accelerated Mobile Pages all about,
exactly?” If you haven’t, then maybe you should, because the behemoth open
source project known as Accelerated Mobile Pages can help sites get a major
boost in the search results. So much so, the Google team announced on
September 12, 2016 on the Google Webmaster Central Blog that sites
equipped with the Accelerated Mobile Pages technology are going to be
rewarded with “expanded exposure”. The descriptions are noticeably vague,
like most statements from Google, but before jumping to conclusions let’s
look at what Accelerated Mobile Pages are all about, exactly.
Accelerated Mobile Pages is a collaborative effort between Google, and a
gazillion notable publishing companies around the globe, such as Mashable,
The Guardian, The New York Times, and many others. The development
teams of these organizations have been working together to craft a new
technology making mobile web browsing faster, to a significant degree. To
their credit, pages enabled with the Accelerated Mobile Pages technology are
noticeably fast, snappy and responsive when you view them on your phone.
Specifically, Accelerated Mobile Pages is a framework, or a set of tools and
guidelines, enabling web developers to build web pages that load blazingly
fast. The core elements of AMP involve a specific approach to coding
HTML, a JavaScript library that speeds up the delivery of files, and a caching
network provided by Google that ensures speedier delivery of the files.
Some examples of techniques AMP employs to make mobile web browsing
super-fast include:
1) Only allowing asynchronous scripts. Quite often websites won’t load
the page until particular scripts have been downloading in full, with this new
restriction it will only accept scripts that load in the background and don’t
block the loading on the page.
2) Only running GPU-accelerated animations. Believe it or not, some
webpages use unreasonably complicated scripts causing your mobile’s
processor to slow down, with this restriction the AMP creators are forcing
simpler calculations on websites that can be processed quickly by the
graphics processor on your phone.
3) Pre-rendering, A.K.A. loading pages in advance. Another powerful
technique, pre-rending intelligently loads pages you are likely to visit in the
background, so that when you get around to visiting them there’s no need to
wait for it to download.
The above examples are only a few of the many techniques the authors of
AMP use to make websites load significantly faster on mobile phones. If you
want to check out which platforms support this technology, the folks over at
the AMP project have created a list of websites currently providing AMP
capability.
Supported Platforms, Vendors & Partners - AMP
https://www.ampproject.org/support/faqs/supported-platforms
Getting Started with AMP.
While AMP provides a significant boost in speed and benefits for site owners
and their users, to be honest, there is a solid amount of work required to
enable it on your site. It’s likely AMP may not even fit in with your current
design or templates, requiring retooling your website layouts and elements to
fit in with AMP’s guidelines. The speed boosts are significant, however, so it
may be worth considering implementing on your site.
Coding with AMP technology is well beyond the scope of this book,
however, the folks over at Google and AMP have put together all-
encompassing guides that are updated regularly, making it easier for yourself
or your developer to put this technology to work. Have a browse or send the
following resources to your developer, and you can get AMP technology
running on your site.
Accelerated Mobile Pages Project – Project Overview
https://www.ampproject.org/
This home page provides a general overview of the AMP Project, written in a
conversational style that should be understandable to both technical and non-
technical readers alike.
Accelerated Mobile Pages - What Is Amp
https://www.ampproject.org/learn/overview/
This technical guide provides a more detailed overview of the inner workings
of the Accelerated Mobile Pages project, including tutorials on how to
implement it on your website.
Accelerated Mobile Pages GitHub Repository
https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml
For super smart technical types, the AMP Project GitHub Repository has all
the updated files and resources needed to get your website running with
AMP, as well as all of the source code which is open sourced so you can bask
in its transparent wonderfulness.

Google's FRED and Panda update—diagnosis and

recovery.
Around March 8, 2017, murmurs of a Google update echoed around the
blogosphere. Prominent Google staff member, Garry Illyes previously joked
all future updates should be named "Fred", so the SEO community obliged
and labeled this newest update Fred.
While many professionals initially debated the significance and exact focus
of the update, industry stalwarts Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land
and Juan Goanzalez from Sistrix put their heads down and analyzed hundreds
of sites that lost massive amounts of traffic, up to 90% in some cases, and
they found something interesting. Sites affected were guilty of a surprisingly
small set of possible infringements, two in fact, which could be witnessed on
affected sites. The common attributes were largely on-page and quality
focused, making this update likely focused on improving the Google Panda
part of the algorithm—which deals with assessing page quality.
Common Attributes of FRED Affected Sites.
1) Sites affected showed a strong commercial focus over providing real value
for users. This means sites with large amounts of pages filled with low
quality content in an effort to generate ad revenue.
2) Sites affected generally feature aggressive ad placements, taking up a large
amount of screen real estate "above-the-fold" or hidden in the content in a
way that confuses users.
Google FRED Recovery Steps.
The update is clearly focused on content quality, much like previous Panda
updates, thus the solution is fairly straight forward for victims of this update
—improve your content and take it easy on the ads. In many cases, site
owners hit by the update made a complete recovery simply by dialing down
their ad placements above the fold. If you think you were hit by this update,
take a look at the following recovery steps. As with all updates, you should
only complete the following steps if you are confident you were definitely
affected by the penalty.
1. Look over your rankings and traffic around the 8th of March, 2017. If you
experienced a drop off in both rankings and traffic on this day, and the drop
off is significant (i.e. it looks like your rankings and traffic fell off a cliff)
then it's likely you've been hit by Google FRED.
2. Next look at your content and advertisement strategy on your site. Does
your website create a lot of low quality articles to drive ad revenue, or does it
feature aggressive ad placements to drive ad revenue? If you're guilty of
either of these, and you saw the clear drop off in traffic then it's almost
certain you've been hit by FRED.
3. If you're guilty of aggressive ad placement above the fold, you want to try
modifying your ad placement strategy. This includes reducing your amount
of above the fold ads, and also spacing out your ads so they are not
deceptively mixed in with content.
4. If you're guilty of having large numbers of low quality pages, you either
want to improve the content or take low quality pages down. Improving
content is the better option, if you make a recovery you will recover more
traffic than deleting offending pages.
5. When finished, update your sitemap and resubmit to Google in Google
Search Console. This step will encourage Googlebot to visit your website and
pick up the changes.
6. Monitor Google Analytics and any rankings tracking software you use.
Rinse and repeat if necessary.

Google's local SEO Hawk & Possum Updates.

On August 22, 2017, local SEO industry analyst Joy Hawkins, founder of
Sterling Sky consulting, and occasional contributor to Search Engine Land,
broke news of a significant update to the local SEO algorithm, subsequently
dubbed the “Hawk” update.
She discovered that Google rolled back, or at least fixed, some of the changes
to the Possum local SEO update that shook up the local SEO results way
back in September 2016.
The previous Possum update had some bugs that would inadvertently filter
out individual businesses in close proximity to each other. For example, if
your businesses occupied the same building with a competitor in the same
industry, or even down the same street, you could potentially completely fall
off the local rankings—if your competitor had stronger local signals than
you.
After the Hawk update, Google loosened their proximity filter up a little bit,
so local businesses within close proximity, unfairly affected by the Possum
update, are given a fairer chance in the results.
Businesses still affected by the Possum update, or the “close proximity filter”
Google use in their local algorithm, includes businesses in the same industry
using the same “virtual addresses”, businesses in the same industry
occupying the same building, and even businesses in different buildings up to
50 feet away from their competitor—now still often filtered out from the
local search results.
So, if you're looking at opening up a new business, better make sure you don't
choose the same building (or virtual address) as your competitor, or you
might find yourself fighting an impossible battle trying to work your way into
the local search results.

Google becoming Apple's default search provider

for Siri, iOS and Spotlight on Mac OS.
On September 25, 2017, Apple announced they made the switch from Bing to
Google as their default search provider for Siri, iOS search, and Spotlight
search on Mac OS—a big news event in 2017 for everyone living in search
engine universe.
The reason for the switch, stated by Apple, was Apple wants users to have a
consistent search experience for users across all their apps and devices....
Google's state-of-the-art search technology likely took part in this decision...
And, possibly, just a guess, the $9 billion annual contract Google is now
paying Apple to remain Apple's default search provider on iOS devices—I'll
let you form your own opinion on whatever the final deciding factor was, but
moving on...
Part of the agreement requires all searches through Apple to be encrypted and
anonymized, to ensure Apple's enduring stance on safeguarding privacy for
users. Good news for Apple users.
You might be wondering what this means for the average user or business?
Well first up, with close to a billion iPhones in active circulation worldwide
—it's certainly going to lead to more traffic and customers for businesses
performing well in the Google search results.
Secondly, well, we're not really sure what the other impacts may be. With
increasing voice search popularity, including Siri, it might become more
important for business owners to ensure their business names are easy to
pronounce...
So, if you were thinking of naming your new Indian restaurant “Patek ’ s
Delicious and Delectable Culinary Indian Delights” you might want to make
your business name something more pronounceable, like “Patek ’ s Indian
Restaurant Los Angeles”, and make it a little bit easier on Siri... Poor Siri...
Either way, it's blue skies from here for site owners performing well in the
Google search results—more users means more customers and more sales.

Google's game-changing Mobile-First Index.

After much anticipation and speculation by the SEO community—Google
officially announced the live rollout of their Mobile First Index on the 26th of
March, 2018. Let's look at official wording from Google's ‘Best Practices for
Mobile-First Indexing’ guide...
"Mobile-first indexing means Google will predominantly use the mobile
version of the content for indexing and ranking.
Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page's content
when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user's query. Since the majority
of users now access Google via a mobile device, the index will primarily use
the mobile version of a page's content going forward. We aren't creating a
separate mobile-first index. We continue to use only one index."
Want simple language? Google is now using the mobile version of websites
as the first touchpoint in calculating the search index and search results, for
both desktop and mobile results... Hold up a minute... Did I just say that the
mobile version site will be the FIRST touchpoint for calculating BOTH
results... Damn straight!
Makes sense when you think about it. The vast majority of the Internet are
mobile users. To ensure smartphone addicts are delivered with better results
on the move, it makes sense for Google to make mobile the highest priority in
the algorithm, with desktop quickly becoming a small minority of Internet
users.
Probable outcomes and action steps for site owners.
If you haven't jumped on the mobile bandwagon by now—with mobile traffic
making up around 70%-80% of traffic for most sites—you're missing out on
traffic right this very second and it's possible you will eventually completely
fall off the mobile results.
Fortunately, there's an elegant solution discussed earlier in the mobile SEO
section in the on-page SEO chapter, but I'll let Google spokesperson Gary
Illyes take the reins, with a direct quote from a discussion about the update at
the SMX Advanced search conference in Seattle...
"If you have a responsive site, then you're pretty much good to go. Why?
Because the content on your desktop site will be pretty much the same on
your responsive site. The structured data on your desktop site will be the
same.”
In other words, if your site is responsive and supporting mobile users, you
can lie back and enjoy a Piña Colada, knowing your desktop-only
competitors will eventually fall to the wayside, while you bask in the glory of
a mobile-first paradise for users.
For the detail-a-holics out there, here are the likely scenarios for varying
mobile implementations…
- Desktop sites with no mobile versions will not be crawled by Google's
special mobile spider called 'Smartphone Googlebot.' They will continue to
be crawled by desktop Google and likely perform worse in mobile results due
to Google's continued focus on improving mobile results for mobile users.
- Sites with responsive web designs (supporting both desktop and mobile in
the one design) will continue to perform the same in both desktop and mobile
results.
- Sites built entirely in AMP HTML will continue to perform the same in
both desktop and mobile results.
- Sites using separate URLs for mobile visitors will have the mobile URLs
crawled by the smartphone spider and rankings adjusted accordingly.
- Sites dynamically serving different content for desktop and mobile users
will have the mobile content crawled and rankings adjusted accordingly.
- Sites using both AMP and non-AMP versions of pages will have the non-
AMP mobile version of the page crawled by Googlebot and rankings adjusted
accordingly.
Summing it up—not much to do really, besides making sure your mobile
support is top notch. If you need to improve your mobile support, read the
mobile support section in the on-page SEO chapter. And if you want to read
about all the bells and whistles involved with this particular update, Google
have put together a digestible guide for business owners and developers alike,
available below...
Best Practices for Mobile First Indexing - Google
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing

Google's mobile “Speed Update.”

Smartphone users want answers delivered fast—as discovered in a study
conducted by Google in February, 2018 titled “New Industry Benchmarks for
Mobile Page Speed.” The study analyzed site speed impacts on mobile users,
uncovering interesting but not entirely surprising insights...
- When mobile load times increase from 1s to 10s, the probability of users
leaving your site increases by 123%.
- When the number of page elements increases from 400 to 7000—titles,
text, images, and so on—conversion probability drops by 95%.... In other
words, thrown everything but the kitchen sink into your page? You're only
achieving half of your potential sales.
It comes with little surprise in January, 2018 Google announced an upcoming
update titled the “Speed Update,” rolling out July 2018. Google are tight-
lipped about updates, so when they make an announcement, it's something
business owners and developers must prioritize.
Site speed was previously used for desktop results. Google's Speed Update
will focus on mobile results. Google didn't reveal exact impacts to the slow
loading sites—but it's safe to say, slow sites won't be rewarded with higher
mobile rankings...
Wondering what to do? Simple. Make your site load fast on mobile. Your
rankings will be safe and sales will likely go up too. Instructions for
improving load speed are covered in the load speed section in the on-page
SEO chapter, for both desktop and mobile speed improvements. The
following resources cover this update and include resources specifically
focused on improving mobile load speed.
Using Page Speed in Mobile Search Ranking - Google
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-
search.html
Test Your Mobile Website Speed and Performance - Google
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Find Out How You Stack Up to New Industry Benchmarks for Mobile Page
Speed
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-
measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/

The rise of voice search SEO and Google's new

Speakable markup.
With the rise of miniature circular voice speaking robots invading people’s
homes—virtual assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant—it comes with
little surprise Google are making moves to capture this market, and you can
too!
Before we cover Google's "Speakable" markup, and how any business can
optimize for voice search, you might be wondering why voice search is
important—after all, you want customers to land on your site, not spoken
aloud, right?
Not necessarily... If voice searchers find a solid voice answer, they are likely
to visit your site. Voice search is an upward trend and best viewed as an
additional source of traffic, not something that will take away from current
traffic. Now we've established it's worthwhile putting voice search
optimization on the radar, lets jump into the gritty details.
On the 24th of July, 2018, Google announced Speakable, structured data
markup—website code in layman's terms—for US-based news publishers
who want to highlight content suitable for voice search and increase voice
search traffic. For business owners and marketers who aren't US-based news
publishers, industry insiders observed a handful of techniques to make it
more likely to appear for voice search results, discussed later in this section.
Implementing Speakable for US based news publishers.
Implementing Speakable is straightforward. Firstly, you need to be a US
based news publisher. Secondly, you need to submit your site for
consideration in Google's Publisher Center. Finally, you will need to direct
your site developer to review Schema.org's technical guidelines and
implement their code on your site. Review the following resources and get
started.
Google - Speakable and Submission for Eligibility
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/speakable#eligibility
Schema.org - Speakable Developer Documentation
https://pending.schema.org/speakable
Voice Search Optimization for regular site owners and marketers.
We're not all US-based news publishers and it's understandable regular site
owners and marketers want to jump on the voice search bandwagon. While
voice search optimization is new, a handful of techniques have been
established by industry insiders. Implement these and you will increase
chances of having your words of wisdom echoed by a voice speaking robot in
a stranger's home.
- Short answers in substantial content… Pages with over 2000 words appear
more frequently in search results than articles 500 or so words. Within long-
form content, include short-form content, in a question and answer format,
using short and concise answers.
- 65% of voice search results use HTTPS and have SSL certificates
installed... If you’ve read this far and haven’t installed an SSL certificate, I’m
starting to get a little concerned.
- Focus on building an authoritative site in your niche—relevant links, high
value content, active social profiles, and so on.
- Make sure your website loads fast—4.6 seconds or faster to be precise. A
large portion of voice searches are performed on mobile devices with slow
Internet connections.
Check out Neil Patel's quick and dirty VSO guide for more practical tips.
Neil Patel - 3 SEO Tips for Voice Search Optimization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpaOahLBmFQ

Google’s "Medic Update"—A.K.A "Your Money or

Your Life."
On the 1st of August, 2018 shockwaves echoed across the SEO stratosphere.
Google released an update shaking up the results, with sites showing up to
50% gains and 50% losses in Internet traffic. Google released a tight-lipped
comment on Twitter...
"Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these
routinely several times per year.... There’s no 'fix' for pages that may perform
less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it
may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.”
That's some vague advice... Fortunately, several industry SEO analysts did
intense research revealing sites affected and why. The venerable Barry
Schwartz, of Search Engine Land fame, coined this “The Medic Update”,
with the medical industry suffering the biggest impact. But this title is
misleading, impacted sites include any site or page affecting financial or
physical well-being of users... So, I hereby call it, the "Your Money or Your
Life Update", as it affects both the money and life of users—and ultimately,
the financial well-being of website owners... Let's look at the YMYL
update’s common attributes.
YMYL update common attributes.
- Impacted sites and pages cover topics that affect Internet users' physical and
financial well-being.
- Impacted sites saw up to 10%-50% decreases or increases in search engine
traffic around the 1st of August 2018.
- YMYL sites with low trust saw decreased rankings.
- YMYL sites with high trust saw increased rankings.
- The update also affected low quality YMYL sites, such as aggressive
popups and auto-play ads.
- The trust and quality factors observed in affected sites are published in
Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Examples include making site
ownership clear on an about page, reputable authors posting on sensitive
topics, quality content, not having annoying popups and ads, and so on.
Google’s Search Quality whitepaper location is included later in this section.
Action steps if negatively affected by the YMYL update.
Like all updates, it's always a solid move to get a second opinion, ensuring
you're not fixing problems that don't need to be fixed and unnecessarily
damage your site. That said, follow these steps if possibly affected by the
update.
1. Using Google Analytics, review search traffic around the 1st of August,
2018. And review search visibility in Google Search Console. If you see a
sharp drop-off in search traffic and visibility, more than 10% or 15%, it's
possible you’ve been affected by the update.
2. If your site generates ad revenue and revenue dropped off, don't go crazy
filling your site up with extra ads. It will make things worse.
3. Review your site to see if it is guilty of the YMYL update common
attributes listed earlier.
4. Re-read Google's Search Quality Guidelines covered in the On Page SEO
chapter in this book. Google's trust and quality factors are covered there,
listing causes and remedies for site owners suffering from the YMYL update.
5. Get to work improving these areas. You should see gradual improvements
over several weeks.
6. The above steps should cover 99% of cases. If you clearly lost traffic
around the 1st of August, 2018, and don't see any progress after the above
action steps, you might have to read Google's Search Quality Evaluator
Guidelines to improve traffic. Yes, it's 160-pages long. Yes, if I had to choose
between reading a 160-page document and losing more traffic and sales, I'd
read the document.
Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines - July 27th, 2017
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchw

Keeping up-to-date with Google's updates.

As of the last couple of years, Google updates have become progressively
frequent. While I understand the constant changes by Google might make
you feel like banging your head against the wall and doing a nudie run
through the office, don’t be disheartened. It can be easy to keep up and the
resources below are great for staying updated. If there ’ s a significant update
to Google's algorithm, it will be covered on at least one of the following
pages.
Google Algorithm Change History
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
Google Webmaster Central Blog
https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
Google PageRank & Algorithm Updates
https://www.seroundtable.com/category/google-updates

Google’s 2019 updates—what’s on the horizon?

You don’t need a crystal ball or secret informer at Google to get a general
sense of what ’ s on the horizon. After reviewing decades of updates made to
Google’s search algorithm, or just previous months, it’s easy to get a general
idea of what changes Google is likely to make.
Before looking at what’s coming up, let’s look at what previous Google
updates have in common. Almost all previous updates can give us insights
into upcoming updates. Previous updates generally focus on two things; 1)
filtering out spam and low-quality websites, and 2) making the Internet and
Google a better user experience. To figure out what Google may be working
on, we should look at possible improvements with these qualities, and also
updates Google have publicly acknowledged as being on their agenda.
1. Security.
Google has already publicly admitted user privacy and security a strong area
of focus. After the HTTPS update rewarding websites secured with SSL
certificates in 2014, and Google Chrome ’ s security warnings on non-SSL
secured websites in 2018, Google will continue this trend, increasing the
strength of SSL-secured sites in the results, and possibly eventually even
penalizing websites that are not SSL-secured.
2. Quality.
Penguin updates are generally those made by Google focused on link quality.
Panda updates are typically focused on content quality. A solid update or
refresh for each of these areas usually happens once or twice every year.
While Google are remaining tight-lipped on these updates, it’s likely Google
will improve its accuracy in finding low-quality, non-relevant spammy type
links. Google may also make further updates devaluing websites with low-
quality content, scraped content, over aggressive ads, or providing a low-
quality experience for users overall.
3. Trust.
As more traditional businesses move online, leading to increased pressure on
Google from commercial advertisers, we may begin to see fewer results for
sites perceived as part of a bad neighborhood showing up in search, and
businesses performing dubious business practices. This includes sites such as
those streaming illegal versions of TV shows and movies, sites with unethical
or illegal content, sites using shady marketing practices such as private blog
networks, or even sites being mysterious or vague about who actually owns
and operates the site. Authoritative brands with large social audiences and
brand recognition will likely continue to be rewarded with higher positions.
4. Mobile.
While we're already aware of the Mobile-First Index being released, Google
will continue further improving their mobile ranking signals for mobile users,
and providing improved mobile search results. At a 20th anniversary event at
San Francisco, on September 24th, 2018, Google's VP of search announced
the following upcoming areas of focus...
- From answers to journeys.
- From search queries to queryless discovery.
- From text to visual content.
This includes changes such as personalized content for users based on recent
browsing history, and more rich media listings being introduced to search
results above traditional text type search results... What does this mean for
the average business owner or marketer? Maintain a strong focus on
providing the best possible mobile support—and this will be a strong
competitive advantage in the search results.
5. Search result layout changes.
Google continually makes small adjustments to how its search results appear
to make Google more useful. Potential layout changes to include
improvements to listings for local businesses, better support for listings using
structured data markup such as schema.org.
6. Increased focus on voice search.
Voice search and speech-recognition technology has become increasingly
popular. The Chief Scientist of Baidu has suggested that 50% of all searches
will be performed by either voice or images by 2020, and a 2018 study by
ComScore revealed 1 in 2 mobile users use voice technology—with 1 in 3 of
these users using voice technology daily. Voice search is a rising trend,
Google are likely to continue improving voice technology to maintain their
stance as a market leader in search.
That covers probable areas of focus for Google over the next 12 months,
based on current trends, and what many industry insiders believe are areas of
focus for Google.
I am not a psychic and I cannot see into the future—the above are just
educated guesses. Don’t run out and change your whole business based on
speculation. That said, keep these areas in the back of your mind, so you
don’t get caught with your pants down from a Google update.
Focus on improving the quality of your site, provide good mobile support,
earn good quality backlinks, improve your security for users and increase the
social media activity associated with your site. If you focus on these areas it’s
unlikely you will run into any major problems, and you will increase your
online performance at the same time.
Bonus Chapter 2: The quick and
dirty guide to pay-per-click
advertising with Google Ads.

Why bother with pay-per-click advertising?

You would have to be as crazy as a box of weasels to pay each time someone
visits your site with pay-per-click advertising, when you can rank high in
Google for free, right?
Not necessarily. Pay-per-click advertising has some advantages over SEO,
with PPC campaigns you can:
- Send customers to your site within hours, not the months it sometimes takes
for solid SEO results.
- Track results down to the penny, and get very clear insights into the
financial performance of your advertising. Simply set up conversion tracking
with the instructions provided by Google, or whichever pay-per-click
provider you choose.
- Achieve a much larger overall number of customers to your site by running
pay-per-click in tandem with your other marketing efforts.
- In most cases, achieve a positive financial return on your marketing spend
and keep on selling to these customers in the future.
There is one caveat to the last point. If you are a small fish trying to enter an
extremely competitive market, such as house loans, insurance or international
plane flights, it's likely the big players in the market are buying a large
amount of advertising, forcing the average cost-per-click to astronomical
prices, and making it difficult for new players to get a profitable return.
If you're selling pizza delivery in New York, pool cleaning in Los Angeles, or
cheap baseball jackets... In other words, if you're selling a common local
trade, service, or product online, it's likely you can receive a profitable return
on your advertising spend.
While pay-per-click marketing really deserves its own book, this is a quick
and dirty bonus chapter, jam-packed with just enough information to get a
pay-per-click campaign setup, avoid common mistakes, and send more
customers and sales to your business.
If you want to delve deeper into the science of pay-per-click advertising, I've
included some great resources on Google Ads at the end of the chapter.
Sound good? Let's get started.

Which is the best PPC provider to start with?

There are many pay-per-click providers out there, Google Ads and Bing Ads
are just two.
Google Ads text ads is generally the best starting point. You can sell anything
on Google Ads if you have money to spend because the user base is so large.
If you're looking to jump into pay-per-click advertising, get started with
Google Ads. Move on to the other pay-per-click networks after you have
some experience under your belt.
Here’s why I think Google Ads text ads is usually the best choice for a first
venture into pay-per-click advertising:
- With Google's search engine market share at 67%, and Bing at 18.7%, you
can reach out to the largest potential amount of customers with Google.
- Fast and instant results. Send new customers to your site within a couple of
hours.
- Advanced targeting technology. Target users based on where they are
located, or what browser or device they are using. Google's ad targeting
technology is among the best in the world.
- Due to the popularity of Google Ads, there's a wealth of knowledge on
running Google Ads campaigns successfully.

Ensuring success with research and a plan.

Like all marketing projects, for a Google Ads campaign to be successful, you
need to start with research and a solid plan. Without first defining your goals,
and designing a robust strategy to achieve them, it's impossible to create a
successful marketing campaign—you'll have no way of determining if the
outcome is successful!
Here are some important questions to ask yourself before you get started:
- What is the objective of the campaign? Sales, web inquiries, sign-ups, or
branding?
- What is the maximum monthly budget you can afford?
- What is the maximum cost-per-inquiry, or cost-per-sale you can afford? For
example, if you are selling snow jackets at $100, and your profit margin is
20%, you really can't afford to spend much more than $20 on each customer
you acquire. Write this figure down, and review it later. You may need to
first run a small test campaign to determine if pay-per-click is profitable, and
the right tool for marketing your business.
- What are the most common characteristics of your customers? For example,
if you're selling late-night pizza delivery in New York, you don't want to be
paying for the lovely folk in Idaho searching for late-night pizza delivery.
Write down your customers’ common characteristics, and later in the settings
recommendations, if there's an option to target these customers, I'll tell you
how to target them.

How to choose the right kind of keywords.

It's the moment you've been waiting for. The keywords! Precious keywords.
Just like SEO, getting your keywords right with text ads is critical if you want
a successful campaign.
Unlike SEO, with Google’s text ads there are different types of keywords
called keyword match-types. I've listed the main keyword match types below.
Broad match keywords.
The default type of keywords all Google Ads campaign use—if you don't
change any settings—are broad match keywords. With broad match
keywords, Google will take any word out of your phrase, and serve up ads for
searches hardly related to your phrase.
Needless to say, almost all new campaigns should NOT be using broad match
keywords to start with. Have a look at the example below.
keyword:
tennis shoes
will trigger ads for:
designer shoes
dress shoes
basketball shoes
tennis bags
tennis equipment
Phrase match keywords.
Phrase match keywords will only show your ad for searches containing your
core phrase. With phrase match keywords, you can exercise a higher level of
control and purchase traffic from more relevant customers. And higher
relevancy usually means more sales.
To enter a phrase match keyword, when adding keywords to your account,
wrap the keywords with "" quotation marks and these keywords will become
broad match keywords.
keyword:
"tennis shoes"
will trigger ads for:
tennis shoes
best tennis shoes
tennis shoes online
will not trigger ads for:
shoes tennis
tennis shoe
tennis sneakers
tennis players
Exact match keywords.
Exact match keywords will only trigger ads for the exact phrase you enter.
Needless to say, with exact match keywords in your campaign, you can have
a high level of accuracy, and achieve more sales. Exact match keywords are
indispensable for every Google Ads campaign.
To enter exact match keywords, wrap the keywords with [] brackets when
adding keywords to your account, they will become exact match keywords.
keyword:
[tennis shoes]
will trigger ads for:
tennis shoes
will not match for:
tennis shoe
tennis shoes online
best tennis shoes
Broad match modified keywords.
Broad match modified keywords are special keywords allowing you to have
both accuracy and a large amount of exposure. With broad match modified
keywords, you will trigger ads that include a combination of all of the words
in your phrase.
To create broad match modified keywords, add a + sign to the keywords
when adding them to your account.
keyword:
+tennis +shoes
will match for:
where to buy tennis shoes online
tennis shoes
buy shoes for tennis
buy tennis shoes
will not match for:
tennis joggers
buy tennis shoe
margaret thatcher
Negative keywords.
One of the most important, but easily overlooked keywords are negative
keywords. Negative keywords will prevent your ads from showing for
searches that include your negative keyword.
If you are using phrase match or any kind of broad match keyword, you
should be using negative keywords. Negative keywords are vital for ensuring
you are not paying for advertising for irrelevant searches.
Enter negative keywords in your campaign by adding a - minus sign in front
of your keywords when adding keywords, or going to the shared library on
the left hand column in your Google Ads account, and you can apply
negative keywords across your entire account, a great time-saving tip.
keywords:
+car +service
-guide
-manual
will trigger ads for:
car service los angeles
car service mechanic
car service tips
will not trigger ads for:
free car service guide
ford mustang 65 car service manual
When choosing keywords, you need a balance between keywords with a high
level of accuracy, such as exact match keywords, and keywords with a larger
amount of reach, such as phrase match or broad match modified keywords.
Use a mix of the above keywords in your campaign, then review the
performance of different keyword types after your campaign has been
running, when you have some data.

Structuring your campaign with ad groups.

Google Ads offers an excellent way of organizing keywords called ad groups.
If you organize your campaign correctly with ad groups, you can quickly see
which areas of your campaign are profitable and not so profitable.
Let's say you have a Harley Davidson dealership, with a wide range of HD
gear from bikes to accessories and clothing, below is an example of ad
groups you might create.
- Harley Davidson motorbikes
- Harley Davidson parts
- Harley Davidson accessories
- Harley Davidson jackets
With ad groups you can:
- Create multiple, and separate ads for each product line. Great for testing.
- Have a select range of keywords, specific to the ad group.
- Set a specific bid for the ad group. Great if you have higher-priced products
or services you're willing to pay more for.
- Get detailed data on the performance of your ad groups and different
products.
Structure your campaign with ad groups with a very clear and simple sense of
organization when you setup your campaign. You'll get clearer performance
insights, and it will make your life easier when you want to make
improvements later on down the track.

How to crush the competition with killer text ads.

Writing a killer text ad is essential to the success of your campaign. Poorly
written ads can increase the overall costs of your campaign, sending less
traffic to your site for more money. We don't want that.
With your text ads, you want to:
- Attract clicks from interested customers, not tire-kickers.
- Include keywords related to what the user searched for.
- Encourage a clear call to action and benefit for the user.
Text ads are made up of the following components:
1. Headline. Your headline has a maximum of 25 characters. With your
headline, you should include the keyword the user is searching for, or capture
the user's curiosity.
2. Description lines. You have two description lines at a maximum of 35
characters each. Your description lines should make it crystal clear what you
are selling, the benefits of clicking through to your site and a call-to-action.
3. Display URL. You have 35 characters for a custom URL that will be
displayed to users in the search results. Display URLs are great as you can
actually display a different URL to the users than the URL of the page they
will arrive on. You can take advantage of this to encourage more users to
arrive on your site.
I've listed below some winning ads so we can see why they are so successful:
Logo Design ® *SALE* $49
www.logodesignguarantee.com/Logo-USA
100% Custom-Made Special USA Sale
100% Money Back. Order Online Now…
Injured in an Accident?
www.1800needhelp.com/
You May Be Entitled to $10,000 +
Free Case Evaluation. 24/7 Call Us
Flowers Online - $19.99
www.fromyouflowers.com/
Delivered Today Beautiful & Fresh!
"Best Value Flowers" - CBS News
In each of the above, we can see some similarities. Each ad has:
- An interesting headline. Each ad captures the curiosity of the user, through
use of special characters, asking a question or posting a competitive offer
right in the headline.
- Clear benefits. Each ad has a compelling offer in addition to the core
product or service being sold, making the ad stand out from the search
results, such as a no-risk, money-back guarantee, same-day delivery, or a free
evaluation.
- A clear call-to-action. The first two ads make it clear what the next step
should be. In the third ad, the call-to-action is not explicit, but it is obvious.
By having “Online - $19.99” in the headline, and “Delivered Today”, it is
clear the user can order flowers online to be delivered the same-day.
If you want more examples of successful text ads and why they crush the
competition, the article below is a good starting point:
11 successful ads and why they crush the competition
https://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/03/26/successful-adwords-ads/

How much to pay for keywords.

A burning question for text ads newbies is, how much should I bid on my
keywords?
There is no clear answer for finding your ideal bid price. You should only
pay for what you can afford. You can find out how much you can afford by
doing some simple math.
For example, let’s look at an example scenario:
- You're selling video courses for $200.
- For every 100 visitors, 3 turn into customers. This is a conversion rate of
3%.
- If you bought 100 visitors at a cost-per-click of $3, this would cost $300.
- With your 3% conversion rate, you will have made $600 in sales, and a
profit of $300
So to calculate your ideal CPC, I ’ m sorry to say, you do need to sit down
and do some math and figure it out. It cannot be avoided. But to keep it
simple, you should only pay what you can afford—otherwise you should be
spending your marketing dollars elsewhere.
Here's the catch, you can only find out what your cost-per-click is after
running your campaign for a while, when you have accumulated some data.
So, run a small test campaign to begin with, to collect data. Use the
information to make projections, and only pay what you can afford in a
larger, more serious campaign.
In case you ’ re wondering how prices get calculated, the Google Ads cost-
per-click network uses a bidding system, which means you are taking place in
an auction with competing advertisers. By increasing bids, your ad position
increases, leading to more traffic or customers to your site.
Here is where it gets interesting. Google awards an advantage to advertisers
showing ads with high quality and high relevancy. This is Google's Quality
Score technology. Ads with a higher number of clicks and relevancy are
awarded with a higher Quality Score, and subsequently receive increased ad
positions and cheaper prices!
Keep this in mind when writing ads and choosing your keywords. Your ads
should be relevant to achieve the highest Quality Score possible, so you can
receive the cheapest cost-per-click.

Google Ads settings for getting started.

The single most important factor to ensure your campaign is successful is to
fill out all of the settings when you set up your campaign. Whatever you do,
do not rush through the campaign settings, otherwise you will end up paying
for advertising to people who have no interest in what you're selling.
I've listed recommended Google Ads settings below for reference, but if you
are not setting up your Google Ads campaign right now, feel free to skip to
the end of this chapter for closing recommendations on reviewing Google
Ads campaigns for long-term success.
1. If you haven't done so already, create an account at
https://ads.google.com/home/. When signing up, enter your Google account,
or let the tool create one for you if you don't already have one.
2. Once fully signed in, click on the big button “Create your first campaign”.
3. Campaign name:
Enter a descriptive name for your campaign.
4. Type:
Choose “search network only” from the drop-down. This is important. Make
sure you select this option, unless you know what you are doing, otherwise
you will also end up buying advertising on less relevant sites.
Select “All features - All options for the Search Network, with Display
Select”. Why would we want to restrict ourselves and give ourselves less
options and features? Choose it, features are awesome. Trust me.
5. Networks:
Unselect “include search partners”. We want to advertise on Google, not
other smaller, potentially less-relevant sites.
6. Locations:
If you are targeting customers from a specific area, country, state or city,
enter the most relevant setting for your customers here. Whatever you do,
don't forget about this setting, otherwise if you're a local business you'll end
up buying advertising halfway around the world!
7. Bid strategy:
Choose “I'll manually set my bids for clicks”. This allows you to make sure
you are only setting cost-per-click bids you can afford. More on setting bids
later.
8. Default bid:
Enter any number here, we are going to change it later.
9. Budget:
Enter your daily budget.
10. Ad Extensions:
Ad Extensions, otherwise known as sitelinks, are a great way to encourage
more clicks to your site. Enter as many relevant entries as you can, if you
have an office address and phone number, use it.
11. Schedule:
If you are only open during certain business hours, enter the hours you want
to be running ads here. For some businesses, it's OK to run your campaign
24/7, because some customers will send an online inquiry if they arrive at
your site outside of business hours. If you are selling something like a local
food, such as a pizza shop, you might want to restrict your campaigns to only
run during your opening hours.
12. Ad delivery:
Choose “Rotate indefinitely. Show lower performing ads more evenly with
higher performing ads, and do not optimize”.
Why would you want to choose this, you might wonder? You want to run
your ads evenly, so you have reliable data when you review your ads, and can
objectively see which ads are performing better for your goals.
You can leave the rest of settings for now, hit “save and continue”, and you're
good to go with setting up the rest of your campaign.

Optimization tips for tweaking your campaign for

better profit.
I've touched on a handful of secrets of successful pay-per-click campaigns,
but I'm going to cover the most important technique for pay-per-click
success.
Review your campaign regularly.
Leaving a Google Ads campaign running without keeping your head around
the performance is like leaving a freight train running without a driver.
Regularly review your ad, ad group, keyword, cost-per-click, and cost-per-
conversion performance. This will allow you to back the winning horses of
your campaign, and swiftly cut the losers.
Fortunately, the Google Ads platform offers endless opportunities for deep
insights into the performance of your campaign.
As a starting point, below are example areas in your campaign to regularly
look over:
- Ad group performance. Review click-through-rates, cost-per-click, and
cost-per-conversion. Allocate more funds from your campaign to winning ad
groups, and decrease funds or pause losing ad groups if you see any obvious
trends.
- Ad performance. Look for winning ads with higher click-through-rates,
lower cost-per-clicks, and lower cost-per-conversion. Pause expensive ads,
and create new ads to split-test based on your winners. Progressively build up
new ads with higher click-through-rates into your campaign over time.
- Keyword performance. Review which keywords are running at a higher
cost, which keywords have low quality scores, and see if you can pause any
overly budget-draining keywords with low conversions.

Using Accelerated Mobile Pages in Google Ads

campaigns to accelerate your sales.
Late September 2017, Google rolled out Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
support for Google Ads campaigns. Why is this important? AMP
significantly increases load speed for mobile users. Faster load times equals
higher conversion rates, and higher conversion rates means more sales. In
fact, the smart lads over at Google's AMP team reported increases up to 80%
in mobile conversion rates, and a 31% drop in bounce rates, in initial tests
with a select few ecommerce retailers. If you're running a medium-to-large
sized Google Ads campaign, it's worth taking a look.
To say implementing AMP is extremely technically involved would be an
understatement—it's something that should only be handled by the deft hands
of a highly skilled web developer, and beyond the scope of this book.
But the potential upside in sales make it worth a look for medium-to-large
campaigns. You can forward the official documentation by Google below to
your web developer to see if it can be done, and read up on Accelerated
Mobile Pages, in the “Google's Algorithm Updates” bonus chapter later in
this book.
Using AMP for your Google Ads Landing Pages - Google Ads
https://developers.google.com/google-ads/amp/landing-pages

Further Google Ads resources.

If you want to delve deeper into the pay-per-click rabbit-hole, the resources
below are a great starting point for anyone starting out with pay-per-click
advertising:
Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords - Perry Marshall
The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords by Perry Marshall is often the
starting point for many professionals starting out with PPC. Offers a great
overview of Google Ads and delves into the inner game of successful Googel
Ads campaigns. Great for beginners, but for more advanced techniques check
out the following resources.
Advanced Google AdWords - Brad Geddes
If you want to be a pay-per-click guru, then look no further than this fantastic
guide to advanced Google Ads management, great for both agencies and
business owners running their own campaigns. Brad Geddes' magnum opus
on advanced Google Ads pay-per-click advertising has been the secret
treasure of many successful pay-per-click consultants, and readily available
in Amazon and many other bookstores.
PPC Hero
https://www.ppchero.com/
PPC Hero is loaded with free advice on the latest Google Ads tricks and tips,
but also covering fundamental pay-per-click methods that never change.
Updated regularly.
Google Ads Blog
https://blog.google/products/ads/
Google's official blog for Google Ads. Great for the latest Google Ads news
direct from the horse ’ s mouth.

That brings us to the end of the last bonus chapter of SEO 2019, and almost
to the end of the book. Make sure you download the SEO checklist available
on the following page as well as read through the final chapter for some final
tips in ensuring your overall success in ranking high in the search results.
Bonus: 50 point SEO Checklist PDF
Download Instructions.

Download the free SEO checklist

We’ve created an extensive SEO checklist so you can more easily improve
your visibility in search engines in step-by-step format, as a small thank you
for reading this book. It covers the following areas:
- Keyword research and finding the right keywords for your site, which tools
to use, where to start, and so on…
- On-page optimization basics, optimizing keywords.
- Social media and web analytics setup tips.
- All technical areas covered in the book in an easy to understand step-by-
step format, and much more…

Where to access the complimentary checklist.

The SEO checklist is available at the following url.
https://www.simpleeffectiveness.com/seo-checklist
After downloading the checklist, make sure you remember to finish reading
through the last chapter of the book for some final thoughts and tips on
making your SEO campaigns successful.
Final thoughts & tips.

We've covered a lot of ground.

This book was written in a positive, light and conversational style in the hope
of making a sometimes-difficult topic readable for readers from any
background. At the same time, if you’ve read all the way to the finish line,
you’ve covered a lot of ground, including:
- The basics of how Google works.
- Google's ranking factors.
- Keyword research.
- Improving your site's load speed.
- Optimizing keywords into your pages.
- Essentials for supporting mobile users.
- Link building, examples of beginner and advanced strategies.
- Social media and SEO.
- Web analytics basics.
- Common SEO problems and solutions and troubleshooting.
- Local SEO essentials.
- Microdata and schema.org.
- Steps for securing your website with HTTPS encryption.
- Google updates, RankBrain, HTTP/2, FRED, Hawk, and several others
- Recent updates such as the Mobile-First Index and Google’s Medic /
YMYL update.
- Staying ahead of future updates.
- Basics for Google Ads campaigns.
... and much more.
Congratulations on being a positive and proactive reader and finishing this
book! The knowledge we’ve covered is more than enough to get started in
SEO. It's also enough to increase rankings, traffic and sales if you already
have moderate levels of success.
Don’t forget why we learn SEO in the first place, details are important, but
don't get bogged down in them. I often see many readers, business owners
and marketers lost in endless articles, forums and blog posts on SEO and not
making any progress with their projects or goals.
If there is one thing I want you to take away from this book, it isn’t an
appetite for details. I want you to finish this book with a propensity to action.
Of all the readers I encounter, the most successful are those with a positive
and proactive attitude, who put their new knowledge into action.
Remember, what matters most is you optimize your site well enough to beat
competitors, make sales and grow your business. If your site shows stronger
signals to Google than competitors, you will win in the rankings. Most
importantly, have fun with it, make it your own, be positive and proactive!
~

Corrections & feedback.

I want this book to be the best for all readers, which is why I ’ m open to
feedback from readers, and use feedback in updates as much as possible.
Even if you are unhappy for any reason, noticed a mistake, or want
something included, give me a chance to fix it and email me at
adamclarkeseobook@gmail.com. I’ll be happy to hear from you!

What to do next.
Which one or two sections did you particularly enjoy in this book? If you
would like me to write more books in this simple and easy to understand
format, please put up some stars, a review and any information on anything
you particularly enjoyed on Amazon. Let other readers know what ’ s in store
for them. Just a small moment of your time will make my day.
For Kindle readers, swipe to the next page button and rate this book.
- Adam Clarke